Berserk
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Insanity, violence, bloodlust, murder - these were all traits the Four Horsemen understood very well...or thought they did.
1. Chapter 1

Berserk

Methos flinched at the sudden explosion of thunder that pounded in his ears.

"I _hate_ storms!" he announced.

"So what else is new?" Kronos replied as he shoved Methos out the door, "Move, we still have to pick up Silas and Caspian before we head out to the house."

Methos grumbled as they ran out to the truck to avoid being bombarded by the rain which was falling in drops the size of silver dollars. "I still don't see why they can't meet us there."

"You know perfectly well why," Kronos said as he shoved Methos over to the passenger side and got in, "Or have you forgotten what happened last time?"

"Kronos," Methos said as he pulled the door shut, "If I never remember what happened before, it'll be too soon."

Kronos ignored Methos as he started the engine and got them out of there.

"At the rate the rain's coming down, I expect the roads on the lower end of town will be washed out long before morning," he told Methos.

"Well lucky us the house is on higher land," Methos commented.

"Some luck, being stuck with the three of you morons for a week, a choice between listening to Caspian and Silas trying to kill each other, or you complaining about everything," Kronos said.

"Well if you hate us so much," Methos said, "Why did you agree to come along?"

"_What_?" Kronos asked, "You really think I'd trust leaving the three of you alone in an enclosed space?" he cackled, "It'd be safer juggling nitroglycerin."

"That's what I like about you, Kronos," Methos dryly said as he put his feet up on the dashboard, "You're so trusting."

"For as well as I know you, it's a wonder I trust you as much as I do," Kronos told him.

"For some reason, that's not very comforting," Methos said.

"Shut up."

Methos watched the rain that beat down on the windshield so hard it was about impossible to see anything. The road ahead looked like it was covered by fog; it was a wonder they didn't run off the road or crash into anything. About an hour passed before they finally reached the police station where their brothers worked. They looked around but didn't see anybody, and then sudden a Quickening hit them, and they looked and saw a dark figure right in front of the car. It wore a long coat and its face was hidden from their view, all they could see was its hands. The figure placed its hands on the hood as the truck stopped and it went around to the passenger side door and stepped in.

Methos pulled up the dark hat it wore, revealing Caspian's face. "Well don't you look like a drowned rat?"

"Shut up, Methos," he replied.

"What happened to Silas?"

"He went on ahead and said he'd meet us at the house," Caspian answered.

"And you didn't go with him?" Methos asked.

"I'm not an idiot, I remember what happened last time we headed up there together," Caspian remarked.

Methos remembered too…he wasn't there at the time and didn't know all the exact details but knew that the last time Silas and Caspian were left alone together, whatever _did_ happen resulted in all of them almost being blown up.

Methos pulled open one side of Caspian's coat and saw he was wearing civilian clothes instead of his police uniform, "What happened to you?"

"Don't ask."

Methos looked to Kronos and said, "Well I can't say I'm too upset about Silas not waiting on us, I'm getting sick of having to sit on somebody's lap when we go somewhere."

"Shut up, Methos," Kronos told him.

Methos made an irritated face and remarked, "I'm getting it from all sides tonight."

* * *

The rain poured down so fast and so hard that the roads were starting to turn into rushing rivers that were already about as tall as the tires on the truck. Methos and Caspian managed to stomach Kronos' driving as they headed off the main roads and up the hill leading to the house they had which was stored away in the middle of nowhere, away from civilization and any and all prying eyes.

They hit a bump in the road and all three of them jumped and about hit the roof. Methos leaned in to Caspian and said to him, "I think I'm getting seasick and we're nowhere near the docks."

They held on for the remainder of the ride until they came to a sudden stop; then they had to get out into the near foot of standing water and make their way up to the house. Originally the land had been a heavily wooded area and there had been a cabin here where the four brothers retreated too when they tired of the modern life. But several years ago a big storm had taken the whole thing down and many of the trees with it; so in the cabin's place they'd had built a three story house that was put together like a fortress: it was fireproof and as weather proof as was possible, and nobody was going to come in or go out who had no business being there.

"Well obviously Silas hasn't gotten here yet," Kronos said, "We'll go on ahead."

Methos picked up the bags of groceries they'd gotten before heading to the police station; the last time they had come to this house was several months ago and he wouldn't trust any food that might be left in it from the last time. They got out of the truck and ran up to the house, managing to somehow avoid tripping and falling in the gushing river that was building.

The front porch was two feet off the ground and now Methos was thankful it was. His mind reeled back to several decades before when floods built so high, he and many others had to stand up on the roof of the house just to see above the water, and wait for it to drain down again; and whenever any help managed to come their way, it was usually in a rowboat. One more reason why he hated the water, and the sea, and boats, and anything else connected to it. In fact, Methos had made it a priority of his to avoid any and all ships too large to fit in the bathtub.

The front door swung open almost automatically, Caspian squeezed in first but then Methos and Kronos, side by side, tried to step in at the same time and they got stuck in the doorway. They finally popped out and into the living room, and it was then that Methos said, "Something's wrong here."

"You're telling me," Kronos said with a slight laugh, "Two people can't fit through a door…"

"Kronos, the last time we were here, we _did_ lock up when we left, didn't we?" Methos asked as he set the groceries on the coffee table.

"Certainly."

"Where're the keys?" Methos asked.

"I gave them to you."

"Right, and I didn't unlock the door, so how'd it open?" Methos asked.

Kronos looked back at the door as he realized what Methos was saying. "Maybe Silas _did_ get here first."

Methos didn't think so but he offered to look around the place; most of which was nearly wall to wall drop cloths on the furniture which were coated in an inch of dust.

Kronos was alone in the living room when he heard an unusual noise coming from the kitchen.

"What the hell's going on in there?" he asked.

"No water," Caspian replied, "The pipes are bone dry, only thing coming out of the faucet's dust."

"Water?" Kronos repeated, not quite sure he could believe his ears, "If it's water you want, go outside, we've got enough water standing out there to fill up the Pacific Ocean."

Caspian headed to the backdoor and discovered something, "Was this broken when we left?"

"Was what broken?"

Kronos saw what Caspian was looking at. One of the window panes in the main door was busted, a pane, Kronos realized, right over the bolt in the doorknob.

"So it would seem we have a guest," he dryly remarked.

"Well," Methos said, coming into the kitchen, "There's nobody down here."

"No but evidently there is or _was_ somebody inside," Kronos said as he pointed to the broken window.

"At least the storm door's intact, otherwise we'd be getting the flood in here," Methos told him.

But Kronos wasn't hearing him, his mind was on something else. "They break this window to open this door, they come in…but the front door's unlocked also…meaning they might've gone out…but if they did, did they come back?"

"Don't tell me," Methos said, "We're going to search this house from attic to basement just like in those lousy detective movies."

Kronos looked Methos dead in the eyes as if to say 'and your point is?'

"I'll check the basement," Methos gave in.

"No you don't," Kronos grabbed Methos by the back of his shirt, "You look upstairs. You," he turned to Caspian, "Check the grounds."

"Why me?" he asked.

"Why argue about it? If they're still around, I want to find them before whoever it is has a chance to get away," Kronos told him.

"Suppose whoever it is comes back?" Caspian asked.

"Well I don't think we'll have much to worry about," Kronos replied, "If they try to stab you in the head they'll ruin their knife."

Caspian glared at him through the corner of his eyes but didn't say anything, and he left out the back door. His boot crunched pieces of broken glass on the back porch; he realized that when he found the window pane broken, the broken pieces should've been on the floor in the kitchen, but they weren't. Now that didn't make any sense, he thought, why would somebody break the window from the inside to get out? The bolt in the door only worked from one way and that was inside as well. He thought about it and in fact got so engrossed in the whole thing that he forgot about the two foot difference between the porch and the ground, and when he took one step off the porch he fell into a standing mud puddle.

With the backs of his hands, he wiped the mud out from his eyes and let out a purely animalistic growl as he got back up; except before he could completely regain his balance, he felt another Quickening. The rain beat down so hard he couldn't see who was there, he held one hand over his eyes and was able to make out a figure in the distance but that was all.

"Who is it?" he demanded to know.

"Who else would it be at 10 o' clock at night in the middle of a flood?" Silas asked as he walked up the side yard, his overstuffed figure becoming more visible now, dressed for the evening in an oversized trench coat and a black hat he about had to screw on his head, "What happened to you?"

"Never mind," Caspian replied, "Are you just getting here?"

"What? I was supposed to watch the house for you like a guard dog?" Silas asked.

"I wish you would've," Caspian said, "Then I wouldn't have to be out here."

"What's going on?" Silas asked as he peeled off his waterproof gloves.

"Come on."

They went in the back door and Caspian told Kronos that Silas hadn't been there already.

"Alright then," Kronos said, somewhat calmly, the proverbial calm before the storm, "Then who _has_ been here?"

At that point, Methos reentered the kitchen and said, "Well, whoever was here, they were upstairs."

Kronos was trying not to laugh and it was a battle he was losing with himself, "Don't tell me they're still in the bed."

"No, but they were," Methos said, "A whole body imprint on the drop cloth covering your bed, and the window's open."

"If there turns out to be some spindly old lady behind all this," Kronos said, "I'll…"

"You'll what, impale her on a church steeple?" Methos asked.

"Shut up, Methos!" Kronos and Caspian told him.

"I'm getting sick of that line," he told them.

Kronos stormed past him and headed for the stairs. Methos followed after him as the two headed back up to the bedroom. The west side of Kronos' bedroom was drenched with the rain coming in the window. His focus went to the bed, which had a definite body outline in the middle of the filthy drop cloth, also he noted, there were wet spots on the sheet. He went over to the window, looked out into the night, and finding nothing, closed it, though too late to keep that side of the room from being flooded.

* * *

"So what're we thinking?" Methos asked later that night as they got ready for bed, "Whoever was here, what…they broke in through the backdoor to let themselves out the front door or to climb out of the upstairs window? The whole thing doesn't make any sense."

"Who knows?" Caspian replied from his side of the bed.

Kronos had made it clear, though in not so many words, that he wasn't planning to spend the night in his bedroom since doing so now required scuba diving gear. So Methos, being the reluctant but dutiful Samaritan of a brother, gave Kronos his room for the night and agreed to bunk with Caspian.

"And for that matter, who cares?" Caspian added, "Whoever was here is obviously long gone, and that's the end of it." He turned on his side and told Methos, "Go to bed."

"It still doesn't make sense," Methos told Caspian as he crawled into the other side of the bed, "Whoever was here…_how_ did they get here? We're miles away from anybody else and if anybody else drove up here…well that's impossible because we would've seen the tracks in the mud."

"_Seen_ them? In this weather?" Caspian grabbed a telephone book off the nightstand and hit Methos over the head with it, "Go to bed!"

_The things I do for you, Kronos_, Methos thought to himself as he settled down to sleep. He knew that Kronos was in no mood for any bedside company tonight, so he'd offered to spend the night with Caspian in his room, a decision he was already regretting, and the night was still young.

Methos turned around on his sides several times trying to get comfortable but nothing seemed to work. He didn't remember falling asleep but he must've because the next thing he knew, he heard a strange noise and it woke him up.

The room was quiet, Methos sat up in the bed and saw that Caspian was lying beside him, dead to the world. They had both fallen asleep before turning off the lights so Methos could see everything around the room; he saw the clock on the wall and noticed that it was 2:30 in the morning. But what was it that had woken him up?

He heard it again…some kind of pounding noise on the floor above. Methos looked up at the ceiling as if he expected it to break away, and he reached his hand over and shook Caspian to wake him up. Caspian moved slightly which resulted instead in Methos basically knocking on his head.

"What is it?" Caspian asked as he sat up in bed, "What? What?"

"Do you hear that?" Methos asked.

"Hear what?"

"Shut up and listen!" Methos told him.

Both were quiet, and they heard the noise again. It sounded like somebody was walking around up there and pounding on the walls, or something.

"What is that?" Methos asked.

"Probably Kronos," Caspian replied.

"I don't think so," Methos threw back the covers and started to get dressed.

"What're you doing?" Caspian asked.

"I want to find out what's going on up there," Methos told Caspian as he opened the drawer on the nightstand and took out a gun.

"You're being ridiculous," Caspian told him, even though he too had gotten out of bed and was putting his clothes on.

"You think so?" Methos asked, "Caspian, who in the hell could've possibly come out here? In the pouring down rain, miles away from the main road and any form of civilization? And why did they? And why did they break open one door, unlock the other and leave through the window?"

"You really think whoever it is, you'll need _that_?" Caspian gestured to the gun Methos had picked up.

Methos opened the chamber and checked the bullets, "I might."

Methos headed for the door and Caspian followed right after him, "I still say you're acting crazy."

"So what else is new?" Methos asked as they headed over to the end of the hall where the stairs leading up to the third floor were. The noises, whatever they were, were growing louder now. Methos noticed as they drew closer to the third floor also, that he felt something…there was an Immortal presence up there but it didn't feel like any of his brothers'.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" they both heard.

Methos felt his blood turn to ice water in a terrifying revelation. Both he and Caspian turned around and looked back to the other end of the hall and they saw Kronos and Silas standing outside of their rooms, looking over at them.

Methos turned back to face his other brother and said, "You were saying, Caspian?"

Kronos and Silas just now seemed to become aware of the noise occurring on the floor above, and they too were now starting to notice the additional presence.

"What the hell is going on here?" Methos said, more to himself than the others in the moment before they headed up the stairs to find out.


	2. Chapter 2

A few minutes earlier ~

Kronos wasn't asleep yet. He'd forgotten what a packrat his brother was and had spent an hour moving everything around in the room so if he got up in the night, he wouldn't trip and break his neck on anything. That was an expression about as old as time, but he'd _had_ his neck broken plenty in the previous century when he was hanged by the lawmen of the west, and it wasn't an experience he cared to recreate with any of his brother's belongings.

Once that was done, he'd fallen down on the bed and was about to go to sleep before he even had time to undress, when he heard it.

At first he thought the noises were something to be attributed to his tired mind, but then they got louder. He didn't know what it was, but it seemed to be coming from the floor above. Kronos remained quiet and listened, trying to figure out what the noise was…first it sounded like somebody hitting a pipe. Then it sounded like somebody was stomping around up there…but with the large difference in one sound and the other, it sounded like whoever was up there was wearing a shoe on one foot and a steel toed boot on the other, every second step made the ceiling jump and he thought the whole damn thing was going to come crashing down on him. Then came the next unexplainable noise which after a few minutes, Kronos distinguished it as sounding like somebody was ripping the walls apart, and the only thing he could think about it was what the hell were his brothers doing up there?

It came as an afterthought…perhaps it wasn't any of his brothers. Maybe their unexpected visitor had never really gone but instead hid up on the third floor…after finding his room vandalized, it hadn't occurred to them to check the next floor up…Kronos opened Methos' nightstand and pulled out a gun. He didn't know who or what was up there but he also didn't believe much in taking any chances. Nobody was supposed to be able to break into this house in the first place, and the fact that the intruder seemed to have done that at least a couple of times already, said something to Kronos.

He went to the door and headed out into the hall; up above, the ceiling jumped again, the noises were getting louder. It was then that Kronos realized he could still feel the quickening in the room next to him. Methos and Silas both had rooms on the same side of the second floor, Kronos didn't know why…he headed over to the door and before he could knock, it opened up and Silas met him at the door with another gun drawn.

Kronos looked down at the gun and commented, "It would seem we've come to the same conclusion."

Silas reached behind him with one hand and pulled the door closed as he stepped out into the hall, "The walls being torn out?"

"That, and someone walking around up there," Kronos added.

"If you call that walking," Silas told him.

"Either somebody in this house has left his room or our uninvited guest has come back," Kronos said.

"There's always a third possibility," Silas said.

"What's that?" Kronos asked.

"Mice."

"Don't be a smartass."

"You think it's Methos?" Silas asked.

"I don't know, I wouldn't put it past Caspian," Kronos told him.

"They're over on the other side of the hall," Silas said.

"Well let's go see."

* * *

"What the hell is that noise?" Methos asked.

"I don't know but we're going to find out," Kronos said as he stepped past Methos and headed up the stairs.

Silas followed behind Kronos and Caspian and Methos brought up the rear. As they climbed the stairwell, Methos couldn't help but wonder just _what_ they had gotten into. What in the hell was up there, or rather who? Well, they'd find out in a moment.

They reached the third floor, which Methos had forgotten was little better than a maze of doors, every one of them leading to somewhere and some rooms led to others. A genuine labyrinth if ever he had seen one. Now that the four brothers stood at the head of the stairs, the noise had unexpectedly stopped. They realized now that it wasn't a regular quickening they had been feeling, but a pre-Immortal quickening. The problem they had now was that whoever was up there could disappear out the window before being caught…they had 12 rooms to check and no way to determine which one was the right one.

Nobody said anything, nor did anybody move, they stayed where they were and listened carefully, but heard nothing now. Methos and Caspian quietly worked their way over to one end of the hall and Silas and Kronos started checking the rooms on the other side. Methos opened one door and reached for the light, but Caspian grabbed his arm and pulled him back and shook his head.

"No lights," he reminded his brother quietly, "We want to find out _what_ it is before we kill it."

"So long as we kill it, right?" Methos replied.

"Shhh, come on."

They made short work of the room which, excluding themselves, they found to be void of any human life. Then they checked the next room and found it was full of plenty of junk that they'd collected over the centuries and just refused to part with, but their strange visitor wasn't anywhere to be found.

On the other side of the hall, Kronos and Silas likewise were coming up empty, and were beginning to wonder just what the hell was going on here. Kronos went to the next door and opened it, and he could've sworn just then that he felt something change in the weak buzz. He wasn't sure what it was but he decided this was the right room. He went in and looked around the room. Outside the storm had stopped, the clouds had parted and the moonlight was shining in through the window, giving the room little illumination.

This was another one of their junk rooms, there wasn't anything in particular stored away in here other than a lot of things collected over the last two hundred years or so. Even in the dark Kronos could make out everything: an old suit of armor, a large taxidermy bear, several shields and swords, a few trunks full of weapons from the black powder era, a large metal table, a human skeleton that had been tied up to hang from the ceiling…Kronos blinked, and then he looked again, he could've sworn he saw the skeleton move.

He saw the figure in the dark now, pressed against the skeleton, trying not to move. Kronos looked and saw that the window was closed, and he was blocking the door, so there was no way out. He watched the sudden change in the way the person moved, they knew they had been spotted and now were slowly retreating back towards the wall.

"You're not going to get out of this room so you might as well forget it," Kronos warned the other person as he slowly advanced towards them.

The dim light from the moon briefly shone on the person as they backed up but Kronos still couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. He heard something and saw Methos and Caspian entering the room through a hidden door that led to the next room; he had forgotten about that entrance but it didn't matter now. The intruder kept backing away, seemingly unaware they were about to bump into the other two brothers.

Methos slowly and quietly crept up on the person and tried to grab them, but what happened next was impossible to believe. Before Methos could grab the mysterious person, they reached back, sent their right arm into a backwards jab up and stabbed Methos in the stomach, then in the instant that he was keeled over and moaning, the person grabbed Methos and threw him forward. He rolled onto the floor in an almost perfect somersault and knocked Kronos down with him. Before Caspian could reach for the stranger, it turned around and dove for the window. Apparently the outsider had had plenty of time to study the structure of the third floor because in a split second they threw open the window and jumped out it.

Kronos got up and ran over to the window and Caspian went over to the middle of the room and tried to help Methos up, who was still on the floor moaning.

"Are you alright?" Caspian asked.

Methos got out a couple of particularly loud moans and groans and crawled along the floor a couple of inches before collapsing and rolling onto his side, clenching his stomach in his arms.

The lights came on and Silas entered the room, just in time to be too late for the show. "What happened?" he asked.

Kronos closed the window and not turning back to his brothers, answered, "It seems our uninvited guest came back, and now they're gone again."

"Kronos, we're three floors up," Caspian reminded him, "And we've got two feet of standing water as it is out there, nobody's going to dive out a window this high up and just get away. They have to be down there somewhere, let's go look."

Kronos seemed to consider it, as if there was anything to really consider, before deciding, "Alright, we'll go, not you," he told Caspian, "Silas, we'll search the grounds and see what we can find."

As they left the room, Caspian grabbed Methos by the arm and pulled him to his feet. A large bloodstain covered the bottom half of Methos' shirt and through the tear in the cloth, he could see the wound hadn't quite healed yet.

"Are you alright?" he asked again.

"No," Methos answered, "But I will be."

* * *

"What the hell was that about?" Caspian asked Methos a short while later as the two headed down to the kitchen. Kronos and Silas still hadn't come back in the house yet and the storm was starting again.

"Whoever was in that room stabbed me and they did it with a most unusual knife," Methos told Caspian as he headed to the fridge.

"How can you tell?" Caspian asked, "It was too dark to see anything."

"I _felt_ it, you idiot!" Methos replied as he took out a bottle of beer, "It wasn't a regular blade, the sides were smooth and it had a large point in the middle of it…like a large file."

"You only had the blade in you a couple of seconds at best, how could you know all that?" Caspian asked.

"Because I've been stabbed with a lot of things over the years, Caspian, particularly a lot of knives…I've been stabbed by the best and some of the worst…one of my last wives had a very large switchblade that I had the misfortune of falling on one time…never saw one like it in my whole life, and even that couldn't compare to whatever that person had tonight."

"Are you even sure it _was_ a knife?" Caspian asked.

"If it wasn't," Methos responded, "I'd hate to see who needs a nail file that big."

The back door swung open and Kronos and Silas entered, both soaked to the bone and their clothes stuck to their skin.

"No luck?" Methos asked.

"None," Kronos replied as he took off his jacket, "Whoever went out the window must've been washed downhill when they fell…there's no trace out there of anybody."

"That's not possible," Methos told him, "There _was_ somebody in that room, we all saw them."

"Yeah, but nobody saw where they went," Kronos said, "That's the problem."

"So what do we do now?" Caspian asked.

"There's nothing we can do," Kronos said, "Whoever was here is gone, after what's happened here tonight, I doubt they'll come back…it's late, we're all tired, I suggest we just go back to bed and try to forget tonight even happened."

"That's the first good idea I've heard all day," Methos said, and looking at his bottle, added, "And a few more of these should help do just that."

* * *

The next day by 8 A.M., the four brothers were gathered around the kitchen table all looking more or less the same; only half awake and like they'd just escaped a night from hell.

"Looks like we all slept about the same," Methos commented.

"Who slept?" Kronos replied, "I kept hearing something running around in the wall of your room all night, I think there're mice in the house."

"At least you had a bed to yourself," Methos said and pointed at Caspian, "You should've tried spending the night with this thing."

"Why? What did he do this time?" Silas asked.

"Oh, _nothing_," Methos replied dryly, "He only kicked all fours in the air like a dog, barking and growling the whole time, then rolled over and bit me."

Upon hearing this, Kronos turned and looked at Caspian who refused to look at anybody or say anything, which was confirmation enough for him.

"And as if that weren't enough, you had to give me ticks too!" Methos added.

"Ticks?" Caspian repeated, finally looking up.

"Thought I wouldn't notice, did you?" Methos asked, then held out his arm showing a large black bug stuck into his skin, "Well I've still got one to prove it!"

"I never…" Caspian started to say.

"First you gave me fleas back when we were both locked up in that lunatic asylum back in 1870," Methos told him, "Then it was head lice in 1909 and they shaved us both…now it's bloody ticks!"

Caspian grabbed Methos' arm and looked at the insect, concluding, "It's not in so deep you couldn't burn it off."

"No thanks," Methos pulled his arm back, "The last time you did that, you about set me on fire."

"Fine, then I'll do it," Kronos said.

"Oh now I feel a lot better," Methos rolled his eyes.

"Anything's better than listening to you gripe about it," Kronos told him.

Methos got up from the table and said, "I think I still have some cigarettes around here."

"You quit smoking 20 years ago," Caspian commented.

"I know that but I still keep the damn cigarettes around," Methos said as he and Kronos left the kitchen.

"You know, Kronos, I've been thinking about what happened last night," Methos told Kronos as they entered the living room.

"What about it?" Kronos asked.

"Okay, let's think about this," Methos said as he opened a drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes and handed them to Kronos, "Let's forget about the _who_ of whoever was here last night, what about the why?"

"What about it?" Kronos asked.

"Why _would_ somebody come _here_ of all places last night?" Methos asked, "In the pouring down rain, which is creating standing water problems."

"They were in the neighborhood," Kronos casually replied as he lit a cigarette and held the burning end to the tick.

"There is no neighborhood," Methos reminded him, "We're miles away from the main road, never mind any other houses…what reason would _anybody_ have for being _here_ last night in the storm? Besides us I mean."

"Only a crazy person would," Kronos answered, as though that were enough.

"I suppose so…" Methos's words were cut off by a long and loud scream as Kronos completely burnt off the surrounding skin of the bloodsucker on his arm.

Methos jerked his arm away from Kronos and glared at him like he'd like to kill him. Kronos said nothing in response and instead had a coy smirk on his face.

"Well it worked, didn't it?" he asked.

"I think I was better off with the nut that stabbed me," Methos told him.

* * *

"Remind me again why we thought coming up here for a week would be a good idea?" Methos said to Silas as he spent the morning putting his room back together after Kronos dismantled it the other night.

"Beats the hell out of me," Silas replied, "Though today it sure as hell beats working."

Methos remembered how much water they had from the rain and shuddered to think how much of it was standing inside of the police department today.

"Tell me something, Silas," Methos said, "In the last few days have there been any reports of anybody breaking out of the jail?"

Silas shook his head, "Not that I know of, why?"

"No reason, I'm just still trying to figure out what the hell went on here last night," Methos said, "Kronos doesn't seem to be giving this situation the seriousness it deserves."

Silas laughed and the rumble of it about shook the whole room, "When does he?" he asked.

Well, Silas had a good point, Methos thought.

"I don't like it," he said.

"Good."

"What if they come back?" Methos asked.

"What about it?" Silas asked.

"I'd like to know who keeps breaking in here, wouldn't you?" Methos asked.

"I suppose," Silas answered.

A thought just came to Methos, "Uh…did you bring your…?"

He didn't finish the question but he didn't need to. With a slight but knowing smile, Silas reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of metal handcuffs.

"Good," Methos said, "Maybe if they come back, we can catch them this time."

"Do you really think they _will_ come back?" Silas asked, "Knowing that we're here now?"

* * *

"Of course there's always the possibility that whoever was here last night never left," Silas told Caspian as they headed back up to the third floor later that day.

"What the hell are you talking about now?" Caspian asked, "You and Kronos searched everywhere last night and you couldn't find a trace of them."

"Which confirms that they weren't anywhere on the ground…I wonder if the person who jumped out the window somehow managed to stay in the house," Silas said.

"You're crazy," Caspian told him.

"Maybe I am," Silas replied.

They returned to the room where everything had happened last night. Most of the blood had been cleaned up from the floor but a few marks still remained.

"So what the hell was going on up here last night?" Caspian asked, "It sounded like the whole damn room was being taken apart."

"And you can note that nothing seems to be out of place," Silas told him, and headed over to the window.

He pushed the glass open and stuck his head out, looking down at the ground. He didn't find anything there but looked to the side and made a discovery, "Oh ho, what's this?"

"What's what?" Caspian asked as he went over to the window.

He saw what Silas saw, a rope dangling alongside the house, leading up to the roof.

"Well there's nobody up there now," Silas said, "Though I think I'm starting to get it. Whoever left here last night didn't _really_ leave, and they didn't simply _jump_ out that window. They left in such a manner they'd be able to grab the rope and climb up to the roof and wait up there until the noise died down. We covered the grounds, we never thought to look _up_ for anything."

"Meaning they'd have to still be here," Caspian was starting to put the pieces together.

"Exactly, but where?" Silas asked, "And what the hell were they doing in _this_ room?"

"Where are Methos and Kronos?" Caspian asked.

"Down in the basement," Silas answered.

"Let's go see if they found anything."

They headed down to the first floor and started to head for the basement when they felt that same weak pre-Immortal quickening. The room was dark and there was no sunlight coming in the windows so it was hard to see, but not hard enough that they couldn't spot somebody right in front of them; all the same they couldn't see anybody. Just when the two brothers thought they were about to lose their minds, they heard something.

A floorboard creaked, and it hadn't been any of their doing. They turned and saw a figure that was partially hidden by the drapes covering the window in the dining room. Though the light was poor, both Immortals were able to distinguish that it was a woman, a young one, she looked about 18, was dressed in clothes that looked about ready to fall apart, and she looked petrified. Then, as quick as a shot, she bolted and ran for the front door, with both brothers chasing after her. The girl didn't get far though; after a couple of steps she fell flat on the floor. She tried to move and wound up rolling backward, meeting with Silas's foot and he tripped over her. The girl rolled further back and likewise sent Caspian flying across the room and making a crash landing.

The girl got up and headed for the back door, but by this time, the noise had brought Kronos and Methos up from the basement and they caught her. She resisted and she fought with every inch of her being, but to no avail, they had her. Silas and Caspian got up and headed over to get a better look at their prisoner.

"Well now," Caspian said as he reached a hand out to examine her better, "What have we here?"

That was his mistake because as soon as his hand was close enough, the girl lashed out and bit it. Caspian yelped as she buried her teeth into his skin and bit down hard enough that she actually tore the skin away. Kronos hit her in the side of the head and she fell back against their hold, screaming. Through all of her convulsions and jerking, something fell out of her pocket and hit the floor. They saw that it was a strange knife with a centered point bearing much resemblance to a freakishly large file, just like Methos had said.

"Well," Kronos said, "It would seem we found our strange visitor."

"Yes," Methos replied, a bit cynically, "But what _is_ it?"

Kronos grabbed a handful of the girl's hair and jerked her head back, causing her to scream even louder.

"I'm not sure," he answered and added, with a gleam in his eye, "We'll have to find out...let's take her downstairs to the lab."


	3. Chapter 3

"How's your arm?" Methos asked Caspian after the noise had died down.

"In a previous life that kid must've been a cookie cutter fish," Caspian remarked, "Get anything out of her?"

"Not a word," Methos replied, "We've got her tied down to a table down there, they've been hammering her with the same questions for hours, and she won't say a thing. I'm starting to wonder if she can even talk."

"She can sure as hell scream," Caspian told him.

"Yeah well you were doing pretty well yourself earlier," Methos said, "Come on, let's see if they've gotten her to talk yet."

The two brothers headed down to the basement where Kronos conducted experiments in his spare time. It was almost a perfect recreation of the mad scientist labs seen in old movies; tables full of beakers and bottles and test tubes filled with different colored liquids, plastic hoses running bubbling liquids from one bottle to another, metal tables, and a few devices the world would be better off not knowing about.

Silas had handcuffed the girl's wrist and locked the other cuff to the table so she couldn't get away. Not that she had made much effort in all the time she had been down there, though. A hundred times she'd been asked who she was, two hundred times she'd been asked what she was doing there, and never had she answered during the whole ordeal.

"Anything yet?" Methos asked as they entered the room.

"Nothing," Kronos answered.

In the light, Methos was able to get a better look at the girl. Her skin was horribly pale and it looked like she hadn't seen the sun in her whole life. Her hair was a rat's nest that looked like it had recently been chopped off to what it was. She wore a dirty white T-shirt covered by an almost threadbare jacket and she had on a pair of blue jeans that looked like the material was rotting away and on her feet were a pair of sneakers that looked like they could fly across the room with one good kick. And, Methos noticed as more of an afterthought, she had some very familiar looking black spots on her arms.

"So that's where the ticks came from," Methos said, and without turning around to face Caspian, told him, "Go upstairs and bring down my cigarettes."

The girl got a different look on her face when she heard that. Her eyes flew wide open and her mouth opened up, or rather her lips got as far away from one another as possible but her teeth stayed firmly in place, but still she wouldn't say anything, she wouldn't even make a sound.

Methos looked and saw Kronos and Silas standing on either side of the table and said bluntly, "Well don't everybody stand around like a couple of petrified redwoods!"

Kronos and Silas both took a step back after Methos' little outburst, mumbling this and that, but not really intending to go anywhere.

"Do you mind?" Methos said.

Kronos put his hands up in a mock surrender and he and Silas headed for the stairs.

"So I have you to thank for the little bloodsuckers biting me this morning," Methos said to the girl, "_And_ for that amateur appendectomy last night!"

And still the girl made no sign that she even heard him. But her eyes weren't blank, he noticed that she did look up at _him_, not off to the side at anything else. And as he stood there watching her, her breathing became heavier a couple of times, and then she closed her eyes.

He waited but was surprised to find that she was still alive, just asleep now. He didn't have any idea who the hell she was or where the hell she came from, but he could already tell he had his work cut out for him.

* * *

"How long are we going to leave her chained up down there?" Methos asked Kronos later that night.

"Why?" Kronos asked, "You got other plans for her?"

"No, I was just thinking we could bring her up here and tie her to the radiator in the kitchen, she couldn't possibly get loose from there," Methos said.

"And what's wrong with the basement?" Kronos asked.

"We could watch her easier up here," Methos insisted, "Besides, if she'd managed to get hold of one of those bottles down there, she could blast her way out and blow up the whole house in the process, and you know it."

However, Kronos refused to budge from where he stood on the matter. "She's going to stay in the basement."

"For how long?" Methos asked, "We're not going to get anything out of her, Kronos…she's been down there for 10 hours now, she hasn't said a word, she hasn't made a sound, she hasn't attempted to get away, she hasn't asked for food or water, you can't break her like you're experienced in doing with regular people."

"We'll see about that, brother," Kronos replied, "We'll see."

Methos still wasn't convinced. He had studied the human psyche before anybody even knew what it was, he knew how it worked, and he had seen the effects worked differently with different people…but he had no idea how to break somebody who already made no demands and showed neither defiance nor cooperation. The way he saw it, they could leave her down in the basement, chained to the table for days, and she'd never once try to fight them. That seemed to have left her the minute she was captured.

He looked at the clock on the wall, 11 o' clock already, where had the day gone? Methos turned around to make sure that Kronos hadn't followed him. There wasn't anybody there, which he took as a good sign. He ducked into the closet in the dining room, took out some extra bedding and headed back down to the basement. He was surprised to find that the girl was asleep again…what he considered the most shocking of all was how well she was taking her treatment. The only conclusion he could come to was that wherever she was before coming here, she must've been put through far worse.

Methos went over to the table and slipped a pillow under the girl's head. Then he undid her shoes and pulled them off, and, deciding she was truly asleep and not trying to pull anything, he took out the keys Silas had left just out of her reach and unlocked the cuff momentarily. He turned her over onto her stomach and peeled the jacket off of her, and when it came off he saw something he didn't know what to make of it. There was almost no back to the shirt that she wore. It looked like somebody had started to cut out the collar and simply went on from there, cutting out the back of the shirt until there were only two inches away from the very bottom of it. How it even stayed on her body was beyond him. It was of no matter to him, he draped a sheet over her and headed back to the stairs, only to find Kronos there watching him. Methos jumped back…around his brothers and _only_ his brothers, he allowed his guard to go down, so he didn't remember to be cautious every time he felt a quickening around, and more than once that was almost his undoing.

Kronos stood there with that oh so familiar look on his face, the one that told Methos he was anxious to hear the explanation for this one. Methos tried to push him aside and headed up the stairs. Kronos followed behind him and said, "I hope you're not starting the process of repeating your previous mistakes."

"Why would you think that?" Methos asked.

"No reason," Kronos replied coyly, "It just seems to me you can't ever make up your mind about _what_ to do with cases like this. First one side and then the other…" with a slight chuckle he added, "You're a regular Mengele, aren't you, the white angel?"

Methos stopped dead in his tracks. He felt his top lip curling up and his teeth becoming exposed and ready to bite and tear into some flesh himself. He turned around, staring daggers into his brother, and in the blink of an eye, he charged Kronos and violently grabbed him.

"I told you NEVER TO CALL ME THAT!" Methos screamed at him as he grabbed Kronos by the collar of his jacket and threw him against the wall.

The noise had drawn Caspian and Silas out of the far corners of the house and they came running and pulled Methos off of Kronos, and out of his reach. It was only after Methos let go of him that Kronos had realized his mistake. He had forgotten, as if he could forget, during World War II one of Methos's last wives had been rounded up to a concentration camp in Auschwitz and was killed by one of the Nazi doctors. It had never been confirmed if it was Josef Mengele himself who so ordered the hit on her life, but from that day to this, every time Methos heard that name, he flew into a blind rage at whoever said it.

Kronos put his hands up again, as he had earlier in the basement, this time with some sincerity, but his sarcasm was still there, "Alright, alright killer, just calm down." Then in a moment of seriousness, he added, quietly, "I'm sorry, Methos, I forgot."

Methos tried again to lunge at Kronos but the other two held him back. He was growling like a wild animal and his hands just ached to choke and drive his nails into Kronos's throat. "As if you _could_ forget," he said.

* * *

Methos stayed in the basement through the night and kept an eye on the girl for a while, then, inevitably, he fell asleep. He woke up and knew that he had slept through the remainder of the night and now it was early morning; early enough probably, that the others would still be asleep. He went over to the table and saw that through the night, the girl had hardly moved. He pulled away the sheet and saw her for what she was, or what he thought she was anyway, an apparently sick kid and little more. It had been a while since he was a doctor but he knew if he had a chance to examine her, he could find out what was really the matter…at face value she appeared to be malnourished, underfed, and shut away from the sun for most of her life, but he could tell there was more to it than that. It was obvious that she'd spent a better part of her time covered in filth and grime, and he couldn't help but wonder where the hell she had been kept.

He picked up the keys and unlocked the cuff. The clink of the metal falling away seemed to wake her up. She looked up at Methos, clearly not knowing what was going to happen to her now.

"You're not off the hook yet," Methos told her, "Get up," he grabbed her and helped her off the table, then shoved her ahead of him, heading upstairs. Once they reached the top of the stairs, she tried to move but Methos jerked her back and shoved her off in the other direction into the bathroom. He hit her in the back of the head and told her to get in the shower and wash up, and just to make sure that she didn't try another disappearing act, he kept the door open and watched her.

The girl went over to the shower and turned on the water, and while she waited for it to heat up, she looked back at the door and saw Methos never once taking his eyes off her. Slowly, reluctantly, she started to take her clothes off, always keeping her back to him. First she took off her shirt, then undid her jeans and pushed them down and stepped out of them, and stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed behind her.

Methos stepped out of the room momentarily to make sure nobody was coming. The problem with having four Immortals in an enclosed space was that there was always a quickening about and he could never tell just how far away they were. There wasn't anybody in the kitchen yet, he took that as a good sign, and he quietly headed over to the doorway leading into the dining room, and just as he stepped through it, he collided with Caspian and each got their nose smashed in.

"Why don't you watch where you're going?" Caspian asked.

"Me? You're the one wandering around the house in the dark like the bogey-man, what're you doing?" Methos asked.

"I came down to get something to drink, if that's alright with you, Chancellor," Caspian replied as he headed over to the cupboards.

"I thought you kept a bottle upstairs," Methos said as he turned on the kitchen light.

"I did, I drank it already," Caspian answered as he opened one of the cupboard doors and reached for another bottle.

Methos looked in the cupboard and saw something. He took out an opened box of crackers and an empty soda can. "If we'd been paying closer attention when we got here we would've realized somebody was staying here…"

"I suppose we're going to have to feed her too, eh?" Caspian asked.

"Might be a good idea," Methos said sarcastically, "I don't know how long she's been here but it would seem for however long it's been, all she's had to eat so far is some stale crackers and a can of RC…so it probably stands to reason she hasn't been here long."

"Long enough to know the house inside and out," Caspian remarked, "By the way, where is the little nightmare?"

"Still down in the basement," Methos said.

Caspian listened and heard the water running in the bathroom, "And who's in the shower?" Caspian asked, "The invisible man?"

"I'm going to," Methos answered, "Got to let the water run a while, you should've seen the stuff coming out of the pipes."

He wasn't sure if Caspian was buying it or not, but fortunately for Methos, Caspian was still too tired to really pay attention. With a new bottle in hand, he headed back the way he had come and disappeared into one of the dark corners of the house.

Methos heard the water shut off and headed back to the bathroom. When he went in he saw the girl had already gotten dressed again, without even taking the time to dry off first.

"Alright kid, back to the basement," he told her.

She went with him, willingly or not it didn't matter because she didn't try to fight him. He took her back downstairs and cuffed her to the table again, and she resumed the position she had been in earlier: face down on her stomach and with one arm over her head, exactly as she had been the previous night. Methos didn't know whether to be relieved that the girl was so cooperative, or concerned, and he decided he'd get the answer to that soon enough.

* * *

"Why did you do it?" Kronos asked Methos later that morning when he came down to the basement.

Methos decided to play dumb, "Do what?"

"Take her upstairs."

"How did you know I did?" Methos asked.

Kronos grabbed the girl by the hair and jerked her head up. She woke up momentarily to find out who was pulling on her hair but went back to sleep when he let go.

"I grabbed her just like that yesterday too, today there's not a drop of oil in her whole head," Kronos told Methos.

"So I took her up to the bathroom to clean up, so what?" Methos asked defensively, "She didn't try anything, I even left the room and she never tried to escape…she's not going to go anywhere, Kronos, if you're done poking and prodding her, we _could_ take her upstairs…"

"And do what with her?" Kronos asked.

Methos shrugged and suggested, "We could tie her to the radiator up there, if you still think she'd try to run." Methos' temper was growing short with his brother, "Look at her, Kronos, she hasn't tried to escape since we caught her, she's made no attempt to fight back, she doesn't talk, she hasn't eaten anything, do you really think she could be so much trouble?"

"Look at the trouble she's already been to us," Kronos replied.

"Do you really think she could do it again?" Methos asked.

"I don't know…" Kronos looked at the unmoving figure lying on the table, "But I guess we could find out."

* * *

Methos left to try and get back into town and check all the missing person reports to see if any matched their houseguest. Kronos unlocked the cuffs but the girl didn't wake up and didn't move at all. Silas picked her up like a rag doll and carried her up the stairs with Kronos following behind him.

"Where should I put her?" Silas asked.

"Just put her in the living room…I want to watch her and see what she does," Kronos answered.

Silas chuckled and remarked as he put her down on the couch, "It doesn't look to me like she'll be doing much of anything."

"Maybe not," Kronos replied, "But don't forget the other night when she gutted Methos like a fish and rolled him like a bowling ball. How does a person go from that, to this?" he asked as he pointed down at her.

Silas looked down at the girl and then back at Kronos and asked, "You think she's faking it?"

"I don't know, Methos thinks she might be sick, maybe he's right."

He hadn't gotten around to doing much examining of her the other day, for the most part he watched her, expecting her, like most would do, to struggle and resist and try to escape. But Methos was right, she hadn't, and that confused him. Like Methos, Kronos had been around long enough that he could only look at her to know there were already at least half a dozen different things wrong with her, but to what extent, that he wasn't sure of. If she kept laying around like a corpse all day, he might have plenty of opportunities to poke and prod at her to find out what made her tick.

Silas hovered over her for a minute, scrutinizing every detail of her face and asked, "How old do you think she is?"

"Don't know…might be able to find out though."

Kronos had never been terribly impressed with science's methods of determining the age of a person, mainly because most of those methods were only applied after a person had died, and it was never an exact science either. Oh sure, those little men in white coats made new discoveries every day but they still weren't any closer to the true answers than they were when they first started. Kronos however, was working on an experiment of his own on how to determine the exact age of a live person by a small blood sample, though looking over his new victim, he questioned if she even had the blood to spare. He wondered if he were to cut her open, just what he'd find inside of her body, the usual stuff aside.

* * *

The girl awoke when she felt the sharp stabbing pain in her arm. She looked up and saw Kronos and Silas standing over her, and in Kronos's hand was a syringe full of blood, her blood. She tried to get up but instead fell back against the couch again and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

"You really think it'll work?" Silas asked Kronos.

"Either way it can't turn out any worse than my last attempt," Kronos said as he headed towards the basement.

They felt another quickening and a second later, Methos came through the front door and abruptly announced, "Congratulations, it's a girl."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kronos asked.

"I checked every missing and wanted poster at the post office, the bank and the police station," Methos said, "If this girl _is_ missing, nobody's _missing_ her. There's nothing that even remotely matches to her."

"So where did she come from?" Silas asked.

"I don't know, has she said anything?" Methos asked.

"Said? She hasn't even woken up," Kronos told him.

"What?" Methos asked, and started for the basement.

"She's not down there!" Kronos told him just as he reached the stairs, "You were so damn persistent about it, I finally agreed and brought her up."

Methos doubled back and went into the living room and saw the girl more or less lifelessly laying around on the couch. He stood hovered over her for a minute, watching her. She didn't seem to acknowledge his presence in the room, she didn't move at all except for her light breathing. Methos absentmindedly let his fingers trace over the top of her head and run through the short curls in her hair for a moment, trying to think.

"And what does the good doctor recommend this time?" Kronos asked.

Methos turned around and saw Kronos and Silas standing in the threshold separating the living room from the dining room.

"I'd like to examine her," Methos said.

"I bet you would," Kronos replied.

Methos turned around and saw that mischievous look on Kronos's face, to which he promptly returned, "Don't get smart."

"Well then?"

"Not here," Methos said, "Up in my room." Before the others had a chance to chime in like a couple of idiots, he added, "I still have some things stored away up there from when I was a doctor."

"Whatever you say," Kronos remarked.

* * *

Caspian was coming out of his room just as Methos came up carrying the girl in his arms.

"That thing's still here?" Caspian asked, "I thought Kronos would've gotten rid of her by now."

"I don't know what you're complaining about," Methos said as he headed over to his room, "She only bit you, she stabbed me and knocked me on the floor."

"So what are _you_ doing?" Caspian asked as he followed Methos in.

"I want to find out what's wrong with her," Methos said as he laid her out on the bed.

"What's wrong with her is she's about dead _now_," Caspian told him, "You'd be better off killing her now and getting it over with."

"Why do I get the feeling you'd enjoy that?" Methos asked.

"Why do _I_ get the feeling you enjoyed your work in the previous century of cutting open rotting corpses a bit too much?" Caspian remarked.

"Some history may repeat itself but that's not one of them at this given time," Methos said, "If you intend to stay through this, shut up and make yourself useful."

"Doing what?" Caspian asked.

Methos turned to glance at him and said, "Well for starters, help me get her undressed."

He knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say; Caspian's overall demeanor seemed to perk up and he only said in response, "With pleasure."

* * *

Kronos felt somebody coming and looked to see Methos slowly, almost reluctantly, heading down the stairs.

"Well, what did you find out?" Kronos asked.

"Not much," Methos replied, "Did you come to any conclusion on how old she is?"

"No," Kronos answered, "I took a blood sample to test it, but that idiot brother of yours Caspian smashed it when he came down to the basement earlier."

"Well you won't be able to get another one out of her now," Methos said, "I figure she's about 17 or 18, height, about 5'7, her weight is about 140, it's obvious to me that she hasn't eaten for quite some time, she currently seems to be suffering from several vitamin deficiencies, she's lost a lot of color, I'd wager she's been kept out of direct sunlight for at least three months, if I had to guess, I'd say she's coming off a case of scarlet fever…"

"Didn't that go out about 40 years ago?" Kronos asked.

"You certainly don't hear much about it anymore," Methos agreed, "She has several bites over her body that indicate she's been in contact with ticks, fleas, mosquitoes and chiggers," he quickly added, "I checked, no lice."

"I'm going to go on a limb and guess no crabs either," Kronos added.

"Don't interrupt," Methos told him, "Overall her biggest problems seem to be lack of nutrition, lack of sunlight, and an overexposure to the outdoors. That, and the fact that she won't wake up, but I would attribute part of that to the fact that her body has nothing to run on for energy."

"So what?" Kronos asked.

"Well, there's one more thing I haven't told you about," Methos said.

"What is it?"

Methos opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and then said, "You'd have to see it for yourself."

"Sounds serious," Kronos said as he stood up.

"It is, believe me," Methos responded as he followed behind Kronos up the stairs.

"Your room?" Kronos asked.

"Yes."

They reached the head of the stairs and headed over to Methos's room. Kronos headed in and saw Caspian standing by the bed, where the girl was undressed, asleep and covered by the bed sheet.

"Exactly what am I supposed to be looking at?" Kronos asked.

"You'll never believe this one," Caspian said as he grabbed the bottom of the sheet.

Caspian slowly drew the sheet back, revealing first the girl's legs which were pale but otherwise normal, then her groin, which as far as Kronos could tell, also seemed normal. Then the sheet pulled up over her stomach, and Kronos saw something. There was a line going up the middle of her stomach, like a cut, and it continued up her stomach, in between her breasts and then forked like a Y and the two shorter lines ran diagonally upward, cutting off below her collarbone. Kronos saw this and he immediately knew what it was.

"Autopsy incisions," he realized.

"They're still relatively fresh, and note the green surrounding them," Methos said, "The cuts are already infected. Somebody tried cutting this girl open and they didn't even wait until she was dead to do it."


	4. Chapter 4

"My guess," Methos continued as he further examined the incisions on the girl's body, "Either whoever did it wasn't seriously intending to cut her open, or, they had no idea what they were doing…note, none of the cuts are deep enough that she'd have to be stitched back together."

"Doesn't matter," Caspian replied, "An infection this big could spread and turn into gangrene, so the effect will be about the same, either way she's bound to die from it."

"Now I know she's insane," Kronos told them, "Nobody," with the exception of them of course, but he didn't feel a need to add that, "Could walk around for days half cut open without making a solitary noise about it."

"Well, Doc," Caspian smugly remarked, "Got anything for this one?"

"I might," Methos replied, "Go look in the bathroom, we'll see if we can't get the infection out." Once Caspian was gone from the room, Methos told Kronos, "If she lives, this is going to be one hell of a scar job."

"Tell me about it," Kronos said.

"You know, Kronos, I've been thinking," Methos told him.

"Oooooooohhh," Kronos sarcastically responded, "What a shock."

"I was looking at the clothes she wore…none of them fit her and they're all about ready for the rag pile, and she wasn't wearing any underwear."

"Nice," Kronos cynically remarked.

"Not exactly too common a choice these days I don't think," Methos told him, "Not as much as it used to be anyway…I'm figuring she grabbed those clothes from someplace just so she'd be able to get away without drawing much suspicion to herself."

"You think she was locked up somewhere?" Kronos asked.

"She'd have to have been for this to happen," Methos gestured at the cut-up job on her chest, "But where?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Kronos answered, "I thought practices of this sort went out in the first half of the 20th Century."

"Maybe there's somebody else out there who loves the old ways best," Methos thought.

* * *

It was a couple of hours before Methos came downstairs again, and when he did, Kronos noted that he looked about ready to drop dead from exhaustion.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well," Methos replied, "First we tried drawing the infection out with heat…that took about an hour."

"I could've guessed," Kronos said, "And now?"

"After that we tried drawing the rest of it out with alcohol," Methos answered.

"Any luck with that?" Kronos asked.

"That 50 percent crap from the store? No, we decided to use our own stuff to try and sterilize it…200 proof vodka, we used it under the kill or cure theory…if it doesn't kill her it has to cure the infection," Methos explained, "The infection's about out but it's going to be hell when it starts to scar up."

"I can imagine," Kronos responded.

"Yeah, well can you imagine who would do something like that?" Methos asked.

"Sure, in the old lunatic asylums," Kronos answered, and grumbled as he remembered those days, "Electroshock therapy, strait-jackets, chained to the wall, taken out in the snow and drenched in ice water…"

"Iron crowns," Methos added.

"Oh yes, who could forget those things?" Kronos said with a chuckle, "Caspian must've had one hell of a time trying to eat with that thing on."

"Who wouldn't with a large birdcage rammed on their head?" Methos replied, "But I don't recall any of them doing a butcher job like that…"

"No," Kronos agreed, "Not too many of them…now the Nazis…" he glanced over at Methos to see if the 5000 year old volcano was about to erupt, he seemed dormant at the moment, "Their doctors, that's what it looks like to me."

Methos said nothing and only nodded his head. Kronos could just tell what name was resting on Methos' tongue but he wouldn't bring that word to see the light of day.

"Has she woken up yet?" Kronos asked.

"A couple of times," Methos answered, "Silas is up there with her now, trying to get her to eat…" he looked over at Kronos and said, "So far that plan hasn't worked."

"Just as well," Kronos remarked, "She'll probably throw it all up anyway. And just _where_ are we going to put her tonight?"

Methos could tell that Kronos was just waiting for him to make some comment of her staying with him for the night, but he wasn't going to give Kronos and his gutter mind the satisfaction, "We can put her down here on the couch, I think it's a safe bet that she won't try anything."

Kronos wasn't sure about that, but he figured it was worth a try…he certainly doubted now that their visitor could ever hope to get far from the house if she did attempt to escape.

They heard Silas coming down the stairs and when he came into the living room, they inquired if he'd had any luck feeding the prisoner.

"Not much," he answered, "She didn't want to eat the food but she had no trouble biting me three times," and he rolled up his sleeve to show where the teeth marks hadn't disappeared yet.

"Of course," Methos confided in Kronos, "We could put her with Caspian for the night."

"Now that would be good," Kronos said, "Maybe we'd get lucky and they'd eat each other."

* * *

"I already told you before," Caspian said to Kronos later that night, "I've been working as a cop off and on for 20 years now, I've never seen _anything_ like that thing upstairs."

"Are you sure?" Kronos asked.

"I've been called out to check on a few hacked up bodies, sometimes the nut with the knife got creative in his work but never to that extent. It's nothing we've had to work with before."

Kronos scratched the back of his neck and asked Caspian, "Do you remember if they've got any asylums around here?"

"What kind?"

"For the criminally insane," Kronos answered.

"You think she is?"

"Well she had to come from somewhere and I doubt somebody did that hack job in the privacy of their own home," he said.

They heard two people coming down the stairs and killed off their conversation. They looked up towards the stairs as they heard a familiar, but somewhat quieter stomping noise with every other step taken up there. Appearing at the end of the stairs were Methos and the girl, dressed in one of his nightshirts that came down so low on her it looked like a full fledged nightgown.

"What the hell was that noise?" Kronos asked.

"This thing," Methos said as he shoved the girl over towards them, "I don't know what it is, I just know it's her."

"Come over here," Kronos told the girl.

But she would not. She stayed where she was and looked at the other two men with a blank look on her face, like she didn't understand them.

"Maybe she _is_ deaf," Caspian remarked.

"Well I know one way to find out," Kronos turned to Caspian and told him, "Go open the window."

Kronos went over to a nightstand and took out a gun. He aimed it at the window and pulled the trigger. The echoing noise had both Methos and Caspian groaning and grabbing at their ears, but the girl stayed where she was, not a single muscle out of place in her whole body.

"Well she's not deaf, just stubborn," Kronos said as he put away the gun.

"How the hell can you tell?" Methos asked.

"Because even a deaf person knows to be afraid when they see a gun being pulled on them," Kronos told him, "She's not deaf, just been trained very well not to respond to noise."

"Hmmm," Methos remarked, "She must've had one hell of a teacher."

* * *

Methos crept downstairs early the next morning to make sure nothing had happened during the night. The girl was still asleep on the couch, completely oblivious to everything. He wasn't sure whether to take that as a good sign or not; all the same he left her alone and headed into the kitchen. It quickly became apparent to him that she had gotten up in the night to eat; there were several empty cans and jars spread all over the counter.

At this rate, he thought to himself as he dumped everything in the trash, he'd be having to go into town again to stock up on groceries. Another thought came to him and he decided he'd really have to see about pairing her up with Caspian the next night.

He heard somebody coming down the backstairs and looked up and saw Kronos, who said only, "Well?"

"See for yourself," Methos told him and gestured towards the door, "She's still asleep."

Kronos saw the mess Methos was cleaning up and inquired, "And what's all this?"

"Either our guest has a tapeworm," Methos said, "Or the ants are on steroids."

"Again?" Kronos asked sarcastically.

"Exactly _what_ are we going to do with her?" Methos asked.

"Well I can think of a few things," Kronos said.

"I'll bet you can, but that's beside the point," Methos told him.

"Well what would _you_ suggest, _doctor_?" Kronos asked.

"I still want to find out where the hell she came from," Methos said.

"Why? And bring home a few more of them?"

"Don't you want to find out how the hell that happened?" Methos asked.

"Not particularly," Kronos responded.

"Liar," Methos returned, "You're just as curious as I am to find out what the hell's going on around here. If for no other reason, then to find out how the hell that kid even got into this house."

Kronos didn't answer him but Methos knew he was right; little things like that always seemed to bother Kronos.

"Think about it, Kronos, do you think it's just a coincidence that whoever did this, did it to her?" Methos asked, "You think whoever did it doesn't know what she is and what she'll be?"

"It's possible whoever's responsible doesn't know," Kronos replied.

Methos could sense the doubt in the way his brother said that, "But?"

"But…I'm with you, I don't know of too many mortals who would do something like that, now _Im_mortals I can think of a few people who'd like to try it just for the hell of it and see what happens."

"That's what I'm thinking too," Methos said.

"What about…" Kronos tried to think, "What about those friends of yours, the Watchers?"

"I can check the files and see if they have anybody on their list with a medically induced sadistic streak but you know how long that'll take," Methos told him, "Those specifics alone could warrant a long list."

Kronos said nothing and only nodded his head in agreement.

"I forgot to tell you something I found out the other day," Methos added as he shoved the empty cans into the garbage, "When I was examining her, I found that she's had a few teeth removed, and from the looks of the scar job I'd say it was by nobody with a dental diploma in this century."

"Recently?" Kronos asked.

"Looks like it was about a week ago," he answered, "It's a safe bet whoever did it, didn't supply her with any Novocain or nitrous oxide to dull the senses…so I hate to think of that additional pain she has to have been in."

"So why the hell doesn't she say anything?" Kronos asked, "That's what I want to know. What're they doing, improving on an anti-bark collar for humans?"

"Maybe," Methos thought, "Certainly just about anything is possible and this isn't even some of the weirder stuff we could think up."

"Unfortunately," Kronos responded.

* * *

"Okay, so we can't identify her by what she looks like, maybe we'll get lucky and she's been arrested before," Methos told his brothers later that morning, "All we have to do is get her fingerprints and we could run them down to the police and see what they find."

"Assuming she even still leaves fingerprints," Caspian remarked.

"Shut up Caspian," the others told him.

"To make it easier, is there anything lying around here we _know_ she's touched?"

"That knife she had but let's face it, you take it down and people are going to start asking questions," Silas told him, "It'd be easier just to get her prints on something _now_."

"Where is she now?" Kronos asked.

"Upstairs in my room," Methos said, "I'll see what I can do."

"I'll go with you," Caspian added as he got up, "I have an idea with this woman, you're going to need all the help you can get."

The two brothers headed out to the hall and climbed the long staircase up to the second floor; as they approached Methos' room, they felt the girl's quickening but noticed how quiet everything seemed. Methos turned the knob and they headed in and though no lights were on, they could see the girl, still dressed in Methos' night shirt, in one hand she clutched a book from his shelf. Despite not having the benefit of light to see, Methos was able to make out the title and the author, The Nanny, by Evelyn Piper, and he saw a perfect opportunity.

"Give me that," he said as he swiped the book away from her, "Last thing we need is you getting new ideas on how to kill us."

The girl looked at them with a perfect look of indifference on her face. She looked slightly confused but as though it had absolutely nothing to do with what had just happened.

"Okay," Methos told Caspian as they left his room, "You're the flatfoot," he held out the book, "You take this to the precinct and see if your boys can find anything on it."

"You got it," Caspian tucked the novel under his arm and headed down the stairs and for the door.

Kronos waited until Caspian was gone before he said to Methos, "You really think they'll find anything?"

"Well if she _was_ institutionalized, then it would have to mean she was found criminally insane, meaning she would've been arrested for something and found not guilty due to mental defect…all of which goes back to meaning somebody would have her prints on file. But if they don't, and I don't know what the odds of that are, then I'm out of ideas."

"You, Methos? Out of ideas?" Kronos shook his head, "Unthinkable."

Methos made a face and replied dryly, "Your confidence in my is overwhelming…well, while Caspian's gone, I'll see if I can find out who among us has a sick need to hack open people halfway, but like I said, knowing our kind, that's going to be a lot of potentials to sift through."

"Unfortunately those people you work with who make all the records," Kronos told him, "Can't determine if any of the victims would be pre-Immortals, so that puts us at a great disadvantage."

"The real disadvantage we have is that that girl will not talk," Methos reminded him, "She has to be capable of speaking, but for some absurd reason she chooses not to."

"Unfortunately there's not much we can do for that," Kronos said, "She's already been cut open and taken halfway apart and she says nothing, I doubt much we could do would have any different effect on her…where is she now?"

"Still in my room, why?" Methos asked.

A mischievous smirk appeared on Kronos' face, a very telltale sign for Methos, who had known him for 4000 years and knew what the look meant.

"I'd like a chance to examine her myself," he responded.

"I'll just bet you would," Methos said.

* * *

"They say never look a gift horse in the mouth, well this is no horse," Kronos said as he gripped the girl's jaw and looked in her mouth, "This is a…"

"Watch it, Kronos," Methos warned him.

"In any case, she only has 24 teeth," Kronos told him as he let go.

"I know…meaning those weren't wisdom teeth that she had ripped out," Methos said, "Because her mouth isn't big enough to hold them _and_ all her regular teeth…which is just as well I suppose, if there'd been enough room, when those were taken out she would've needed stitches, and without them, I hate to think what shape she'd be in now that could be worse than she already is."

The girl seemed to pay no attention to what the two men had to say about her; in fact she seemed about unconscious again. She paid no attention to Kronos pulling the bedcovers down to get a better look at her.

"You said 140 pounds?" he asked.

"That was my guess," Methos said.

Kronos slipped one hand under the girl's back and the other under one thigh and lifted her up. She barely moved, as though she were already dead.

"You're crazy, she's 165 pounds if she's an ounce," Kronos replied as he laid her back out on the bed. As he did that, another thought came to his mind and he started to push up the nightshirt she wore.

"Now what're you doing?" Methos inquired.

"Take another look at her, Brother, a _closer_ look," Kronos told him.

Methos looked and tried to see what it was that Kronos was seeing. He didn't think he was, that much was obvious to Kronos.

"You spent so many years as a doctor, focusing on the death and the decay and disease, you don't even know what to look for in a live one anymore," Kronos told him. He grabbed Methos' hand and placed it on the girl's leg, "Give it a squeeze and see what you find."

Methos was tempted to remark that his brother was just being an old pervert, but he did and what he found surprised him. "All muscle…right up to the thighs."

"Not a very common trait anymore in women this age," Kronos said.

"Especially this young, unless they're in training for something," Methos thought.

"No," Kronos replied, "If she were, somebody would notice she was missing."

"You've got another idea?" Methos asked.

"Hard labor would be my guess," Kronos said, "Turn her over."

Methos still didn't get where Kronos was going with this, but he did, and rolled the girl over onto her stomach, and Kronos pulled the shirt clear up to her shoulders.

"Hell of a view," Methos commented in his usual cynic matter. But he could tell what Kronos was coming to, he reached out and placed his hand on the girl's back and felt up and down it…all muscles bulging out from it, very little fat anywhere in it. Then he thought of something else and reached over and grabbed the girl's hand and felt it, the skin was callused right under the fingers.

"Well, it's a safe bet she's no heiress," he said as he pulled his hand away and rolled the shirt back down to preserve some dignity for the poor girl, "But it still doesn't say much."

"I think it says damn plenty," Kronos argued, "If you're going to snatch up somebody for your own sick uses, the person most likely for you to target is somebody weak and quiet, won't give you any trouble…and that sure as hell isn't this kid."

"So…what're we thinking?" Methos asked, "Whoever did it, might have known her?"

"It's a good guess that what happened to her was personal," Kronos said, "As we said before…something of this sort being done in a random nature…that hasn't happened since…"

"Since the Holocaust, I remember," Methos said, "Or maybe it's not that…maybe it's another Jack the Ripper in the making."

"Jack the Ripper cut his victims into pieces left and right," Kronos reminded him, "Kidneys here, the heart over there, a head only still intact by a thread of skin."

"So maybe this guy's still an amateur," Methos thought.

"To pull something like this off, they can't be an amateur anything," Kronos insisted.


	5. Chapter 5

Later that afternoon, Kronos came down the stairs and found Methos sprawled out on the couch, asleep. He went over to his brother and woke him up.

"What did you do that for?" Methos asked, "I just closed my eyes."

"What did you find?" Kronos wanted to know.

"I've been searching the Watcher database for Immortals with a tendency to experiment on people using sharp little medical implements," Methos said as he fingered the laptop computer lying on the coffee table, "Guess what? I've got a list long enough to cover the whole damn telephone book."

"Any of them last seen around here?" Kronos asked.

"No," Methos shook his head.

Both could tell what the other was thinking, they'd been together long enough neither had to say anything further for the other to know.

"So now what?" Kronos asked.

"I've got to tell you, I'm running out of ideas," Methos said, "If it's not an Immortal, and this follows no MO in the police department, and we can't find out who this kid is, and she's not missing so's anybody would notice, and she won't tell us where she's been or who the hell is behind this…I don't know where else to look…it's not like we can put an ad in the personals' section in the newspaper, '5000 year old white male seeks person or persons who are into dental extractions and vivisections'."

"Have you seen the personals' ads lately?" Kronos asked him, "Trust me, that wouldn't be the weirdest one."

"Hey," Methos thought of something, "Where's Caspian? He should've been back by now."

"Patience," Kronos said, "You know how long it takes for them to run tests."

"Yes, but this is just matching fingerprints," Methos said, "How long can it take to go through that?"

"Need you ask?" Kronos replied, "Do you have any idea how many people there are in this vicinity alone? And do you want to take a bet on how many of them have already been printed for one reason or another? And how long it's going to take to run one set of prints against all those thousands?"

"He still should've been back by now," Methos insisted.

They both turned to the front door when they felt the quickening of another Immortal.

"His ears must be burning," Kronos said.

The door swung open and Caspian stepped in, looking like somebody had tried to drown him.

"What happened to you?" Methos asked.

"The police station still has standing water, about a good six inches worth of it," Caspian informed them as he peeled off his coat, "Nobody can stand up in there, everybody's falling down, one idiot ran into me and we both hit the floor, and the prints on the book were wiped out in the process."

Methos couldn't believe what he was hearing, "How could that be possible?"

"You've got me, all I know is that once we fished the book out, there weren't any prints on it that they could use to match to anything," Caspian said.

Methos and Kronos turned to look at one another again.

"I don't know what's going on," Methos said, "But it seems fate has it in for us _not_ to find out who this kid is."

"I don't believe in fate," Kronos told him.

"You got another idea to explain this sudden rash of bad luck we've had?" Methos asked.

"Sure, the universe is just waiting for us to get cocky."

"Well?" Caspian said as he rolled up his coat and tossed it away, "Is anybody else interested in giving up?"

Methos hit himself in the head, "Boy are we stupid…why don't we just take _her_ down to the station?"

"For what reason?" Caspian asked.

"Book her on assault charges," Methos said, "After all, she's nearly killed all of us at least once, that way she's right there to print."

Caspian shook his head, "You forget…the second somebody saw those cuts on her body, they'd be all over our asses, first idea they'd have is that we did it to her, and if we didn't, they'd also want to know who did it…and since we don't even know that ourselves, we can't really take a chance on anybody else getting involved, especially those idiotic mortals I work with."

"He's right," Kronos told Methos.

"Alright," Methos said, "What _about_ that knife she had?"

"What about it?" the others asked.

"Silas said if we took it down, it would get them asking questions…it's a most unusual knife, I've certainly never seen one like it before…if they found out where it came from, it would certainly be an area severely narrowed down," Methos said.

"That's also no good," Caspian reminded him, "Let's assume for a moment she took it as a souvenir of sorts…if there's so much as one drop of blood left on it, they'll trace it back to whoever was attacked with it."

"So?" Kronos asked.

"So let's assume that knife was used to cut off somebody's head, we don't need the authorities getting wrapped up in _that_ either," Caspian told him.

"You don't really think she'd…" Methos started to say.

"Why not? She's certainly tried with us already, you said so yourself."

"Yeah, to kill us but she hasn't made any attempt for any of our heads," Methos argued.

"Not yet, but you haven't given her much chance to, have you?" Caspian asked.

"If it'll make you feel any better, she can sleep with you tonight and you can see what she does or doesn't do," Methos told him.

Kronos came between the two brothers and grabbed them by the backs of their collars and was very close to bashing their heads together as he said, "If you two are done arguing like a couple of children…exactly _what_ are we going to do now?"

Methos shook his head, "I don't know, I'm out of ideas, and until something new comes up, I don't have any idea what we're going to do about her."

Caspian looked to his other brother and said, "Hey Kronos, I've got an idea."

"Oh Lord," Methos muttered, "Quick, everybody hit the dirt."

Kronos ignored Methos' rather dry histrionics and said to Caspian, "What've you got in mind?"

Caspian reached over and grabbed Kronos by his jacket and pulled his brother in to him so they could speak in something of privacy without Methos hearing them.

"It _might_ work," Kronos said.

"At this rate I can't see how it would hurt any," Caspian responded.

What the two brothers didn't know was that Methos _had_ heard them. Kronos had been working on his own version of a truth serum for several years, and it had been Caspian's idea that since when a person was under the effects of it, they had no choice _but_ to tell the truth, that the girl wouldn't be capable of maintaining her silence any further. Methos didn't think it would work, but as he said, he didn't have anymore ideas of his own; so if the two of them wanted to try it, let them, that was the way he saw it.

* * *

About an hour later, he heard them coming down the stairs and got up from where he lay on the couch and saw Kronos coming down with Caspian behind him.

"Didn't work, eh?" he asked innocently.

"No," Kronos answered.

"I didn't think so," Methos said.

"Oh shut up," Caspian told him.

Methos got up on his knees and looked over the back of the couch at his brothers, "Well, anymore bright ideas, genius?"

"Not yet," Kronos confessed as he collapsed in the chair by the couch, "But I will."

"In the meantime," Methos said, "Can we see about getting her some real clothes to wear? I'm getting tired of seeing her walking around this place looking like she should be in a hospital."

He heard somebody snickering from behind. He looked over the couch's back again and saw Caspian seated over towards the wall.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"I don't think that's the _real_ reason you're bringing it up," Caspian replied.

"Ah you're all a bunch of perverts," Methos said, "The whole lot of you…believe it or not I have managed to make it 5000 years without jumping _everything_ in a skirt."

"Thank God for that," Caspian remarked, "Weren't you living in Scotland sometime back in the 1700s?"

"Somewhere around there," Methos answered.

"Now look," Kronos told them, "The two of you can dress her up like the ape man for all I care if you just _shut up_ about it."

"Well!" Methos responded as he got up, "Somebody's certainly in a rotten mood today."

He and Caspian headed back up the stairs; their voices trailing off about Kronos' particularly sour demeanor that day, as Kronos lay down on the couch and closed his eyes, grumbling to himself about everything that had gone on in the past couple of days.

* * *

About an hour later, Kronos woke up and heard his brothers coming down the stairs, and he was surprised to find Methos and Caspian on either side of the girl as they walked her down, and she was dressed in one of Kronos' shirts and a pair of his jeans.

"I'm going to guess there's a reason behind this?" he asked.

"Yeah," Caspian answered, "The reason is she's too fat to wear our clothes."

The girl balled her hand up into a fist and without even turning to look, reached over and punched Caspian in the gut.

"Well we know now for sure that she's not deaf," Methos said with a slight, amused smile on his face.

Kronos reached over and grabbed the shirt she wore by the seams and pulled at it, the material expanding around her like a tent. He let go of it and then grabbed her by the jeans she wore and pulled at the material and was surprised to find it wouldn't move far from her skin, that her lower body seemed to only be a couple of sizes smaller than his own. He looked over to Methos who just innocently shrugged his shoulders and looked back at him with a familiar look on his face, one that said 'don't look at me, I can't explain it either'. He looked at the girl again and the look on her face clearly said that she wasn't amused by any of it.

"In the process," Methos told him, "We made another discovery."

"What's that?" Kronos asked.

"Get back and we'll show you."

Kronos thought Methos was crazy but he decided to humor them. He stepped back and waited to see what they would do next. Both Methos and Caspian shoved the girl forward, forcing her to walk unassisted, or rather she tried to. Kronos watched as with every other step she took, it seemed to be with great trouble that she raised up her right foot and when she did, it stomped down onto the floor.

"So that's what all that noise was up in the attic," he said, "Her stomping around up there…but what the hell _is_ that?"

"I don't know," Methos said, "I've examined her and I can't find anything wrong with her foot."

Caspian opened his mouth but Methos cut him off, saying, "One smart remark out of you, and I'll rip your spine out through your ear."

"I didn't say anything," Caspian said.

"See to it that you don't," Methos advised him.

* * *

Day turned to night with little difference between the two as the sun never came out. As the hours passed in the night, a storm built up outside and the rain could be heard pounding against the house, as could the howling winds and the occasional clap of thunder following a flash of lightning. One by one the four brothers decided to call it a night, until Kronos was the last one remaining downstairs. He wasn't sure why, but he went around making sure all the windows were shut and the doors were locked; he really wasn't interested in getting anymore live-in visitors than they already had.

All the lights were out, and in the dark he made his way through the rooms of the first floor of the house, coming to an unexpected stop in the living room. Lightning flashed and even through the closed blinds, lit up the room, making the girl on the couch perfectly visible. She had changed back into Methos' shirt for the night and was covered with a thin sheet. Kronos thought about the opportunity available to him, and a knowing smirk found its way onto his face.

The girl turned over onto her side and in the process, felt her hand brush up against something. She opened her eyes and saw Kronos staring down at her.

"Get up," he told her.

At first she didn't move, just laid where she was, staring up at him, looking absolutely dumbstruck.

"I know you can hear me now get up," Kronos said the last part through his clenched teeth and reached for her, but she got up from the couch of her own volition. He grabbed her arm and gave her a bit of a shove and told her to go out to the hall and go upstairs, and he was right behind her the whole way.

As soon as she got on the stairs she started to lose her balance and fall, so he grabbed her arm and more or less pulled her up the rest of the way. When they reached the second floor, Kronos went on ahead of her and opened the door to his room. She followed in behind him, turned back to the open doorway and weighed her options. But she knew her fate was already sealed for the night, so she closed the door behind her.

* * *

Methos opened his eyes and saw that it was starting to get light in his room. He forced himself out of bed and went over to the window and pulled up the shade to see that the sun wasn't out, but things were getting brighter outside as well. He went back over to his bed and picked up the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was going on six in the morning. With a yawn and a stretch that popped something in his back, Methos got a change of clothes and headed off to the bathroom to get a shower.

As he crossed through the hall, he passed by Kronos' bedroom and saw that the door was slightly ajar. He decided to poke his head in and see if his brother was awake yet. Methos quietly pushed the door open further and look in and was mortified to see the girl in bed with Kronos, laying alongside him.

Though he knew his brother, Methos was still shocked by what he saw. Dumbstruck, he backed away from the door and headed across the hall. He got a quick, cold shower, then dressed and headed downstairs to wait for his brother.

Half an hour later, Kronos descended down the kitchen stairs and found Methos already seated at the table, halfway through a six-pack of beer.

"Well," he said, "You're up early."

"Yeah," Methos replied, "I got one hell of a view earlier."

"Of what?"

"You and that girl."

Kronos stopped and turned on his heel and looked back at Methos, "What do you mean?"

"I saw the two of you in bed together, I always knew you were an old pervert but this just caps it all," Methos said.

Kronos started to laugh, "You really think that I…"

"I know you, Kronos, you're a lot of things but altruistic isn't one of them, if you had her up in your room last night, it was for a reason," Methos said.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," Kronos told him, "Nor do I have to explain what I do, particularly what I do in the privacy of my own room."

The two brothers started yelling at each other and were screaming over each other so neither could be heard coherently; all the while Silas and Caspian were making their way down the stairs with the girl in between them, and they stopped on the third step when they took in the spectacle below.

"If you two are done squabbling like a couple of ducks," Caspian told them as they walked down the last few steps.

The two brothers broke up the fight and backed away from each other and to a separate corner of the kitchen.

Methos turned and watched the way the girl walked down the stairs and across the room, always struggling to pick up her right foot and when it finally came up it slammed down on the floor, and a new thought came to him, "Watch how she walks again, does something about it look familiar to you?"

Both Kronos and Caspian watched as the girl tried to walk over to the other side of the room, always with that exaggerated difficulty involving her right foot.

"I get it," Kronos finally said, "She was shackled."

"More than that," Methos said, "If I had to guess, I'd say…somebody put her in an Oregon boot."

Kronos' eyes widened when he heard that and even Caspian appeared shocked at the suggestion.

"Those things haven't been used since the 40s," he said.

"Why not?" Methos asked as he looked over at Kronos, "We said before this seems to be the work of somebody who loves the old ways best. I think we hit the nail on the head."

"Exactly _what_ kind of sick bastard are we dealing with?" Kronos asked.


	6. Chapter 6

"Oregon boots, you remember those, don't you, Silas?" Methos asked.

"Not fondly," he replied, "30 pound rings locked around one ankle; killed a lot of prisoners that way, damn near killed plenty more."

"Worked damn well for prison control though," Caspian commented as they headed up the stairs, "They ought to bring that back, even today with the electrified barbed wire fences and the armed guards, they still have people breaking out every damn day of the week, medium security, maximum security, it doesn't matter, if somebody's determined enough to bust out, they'll find a way."

"As apparently _she_ did," Methos said, pertaining to the girl downstairs, "The question is how? Those things need keys, don't they?"

The other three brothers all answered, over one another, that theirs certainly did.

"That's what I thought," he continued.

"So how exactly did she get out of hers?" Silas seemed to be catching on to what Methos was getting at.

"Obviously somebody let her out of it," Methos said.

Caspian stopped on the stair and Methos walked into him. Caspian turned around and said, "And just how do you figure that?"

"Because when she came here she was wearing those awful clothes, they didn't fit her at all, meaning that she got them from somewhere else, meaning she had none of her own, meaning hers were taken away from her, probably, I'm guessing, at the same time she was taken out of that damn boot, because its brace would have to hook onto the shoe she wore, you know that."

Silas laughed and commented, "You should've graduated the police academy instead of this thing," as he pointed to Caspian.

"So now what?" Caspian asked.

"It's not much to go on but it is something," Methos said, "I'll go back and check the chronicles and see if anybody fits in this description, you go over your files and see if there're any criminals who have a thing for shackling their victims."

Caspian leaned over towards Kronos and said, "Have I told you lately that I hate him?"

"Yes."

Caspian paused and then added, "Today?"

"Come on," Methos said.

* * *

"Unfortunately for us," Methos said as he closed his laptop, "Most of the Immortals who have a penchant for hobbling their victims have already been laid out in their own graves, permanently."

"Old age finally caught up with them, did it?" Kronos asked coyly.

"Yes, in the name of some damn do-gooder challenge," Methos replied as he lifted his feet up onto the couch, "I hope Caspian's having better luck than we are. He went down to the police station to check their computer files to see if anybody matches what we've found."

"Why'd he go down there again?" Kronos asked.

"Well let's face it, looking for somebody who likes to chain heavy weights on people's feet, a practice that hasn't been used in this severity in this civilized country for over 50 years, isn't exactly something you can explain on the phone and have somebody else check out," Methos reminded him.

"True. Where's the girl?"

"Oh, Silas has her…" Methos tried to remember, "Somewhere, keeping her mind occupied."

"What mind?" Kronos asked as he fell down on the couch beside his brother.

"Oh come now, Kronos, you don't mean to tell me you're going to start underestimating her now," Methos said, "She broke into our home several times, all of which without our knowledge and has tried to kill nearly all of us…sheer psychosis alone isn't enough to pull all that off, she had to do some planning for it somewhere."

"I suppose so."

"You know, Kronos, I've been thinking."

"What about now?" he asked.

"Alright, we've established that this kid _had_ to be locked up somewhere, for an extended amount of time…what if she _was_ trained not to speak?"

"I don't get it," Kronos said.

"If she was, maybe she can be retrained to talk again," Methos said.

"Okay," Kronos was willing to entertain the idea, "How?"

Methos shrugged and said, "Same way you do with a child, I guess, start with one word at a time and work your way up."

"You're crazy," Kronos told him, "She understands every word that we say."

"How can you be sure?" Methos asked.

"I _know_."

Methos laughed and responded, "Don't be so sure of yourself, you've been wrong before."

"So have you," Kronos said, "You don't see me second guessing everything you're doing."

Methos turned to look at Kronos and said nothing, only glared at him.

* * *

"It doesn't make sense," Caspian said later when he returned from the precinct.

"I'll bite," Methos said, "What doesn't make sense?"

"That girl," he answered, "Every time she walks, she picks that foot up and drops it, like a zombie, over and over and over, _if_ you can call that walking."

"Yeah, so what?" Methos asked.

"Are you forgetting that the night she shish-kabobbed you, after she used you as a bowling ball, she turn around and _ran_ for the window and jumped out of it?"

"That's only about ten feet," Methos said.

"It doesn't matter, the fact remains that on that night, she _ran_ to get out of here…why now is she dragging that foot?"

"Oh come on, Caspian, you know as well as I do that when it's a matter of life and death, people will do extraordinary things they ordinarily can't do."

"Oh yeah? Then how come she hadn't the brains to get out of this place?"

"You said yourself that night we had two feet standing water, how the hell was she supposed to get back to town in that?" Methos asked.

"That's just it, _nothing_ about this whole ordeal is making any sense," Caspian remarked.

"I think that's the point," Methos said.

Caspian glanced over at his brother and commented, "You know sometimes you strike me as being a very weird person."

Methos choked on a laugh and returned, "Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle _broken_. Meanwhile did you find anything out at the station?"

"No!" Caspian answered, "It's like wherever this kid was, to get from there to here she must've just fallen out of the sky."

"The sky doesn't have people fitting this description," Methos reminded his brother, "They generally dwell in a more southern region."

Caspian looked back at his brother again and told him, "Don't be a smartass."

"Sorry. Anyway, an idea came to me earlier," Methos told him.

"What?"

"I was thinking about the same thing, and I thought maybe if we can scare her, she _would_ run, or at least make an attempt at it."

"Yeah but you forget," Caspian responded, "This girl's been hobbled, cut open, and had people _shooting_ at her…exactly what can we do that's going to scare her after that?"

"That's the only part I haven't been able to figure out yet," Methos admitted, his cheeks showing a little color.

The two brothers stood in the middle of the room, looking off at nothing in particular, trying to come up with an answer to that question. Methos cocked his head to the side and looked Caspian up and down, and chuckled, but ultimately shook his head and said, "No, that wouldn't do it."

* * *

Kronos turned on the lights to the basement as he headed down the stairs. He wanted to make sure that nobody had been down here recently and gotten into his work. So far everything looked normal. Nothing had been touched as far as he could tell. The floor had large chains lying near the metal table they'd put the girl on when they first found her. Past that was where he did his work and the primary reason he spent many hours down here when the four of them came up to the house.

On one table there rested several dozen test tubes full of liquids: all different kinds, all made for different reasons, most of them were still in the experimental stage, he hadn't been able to prove most of them worthy of doing what they were supposed to yet. His truth serum definitely needed some improvement…he sorted through the others until he found the one he wanted.

The liquid in the glass tube was as clear as water. Microscopic bubbles ran up and down in the formula, not unlike when it was first cooked up on the Bunsen burner and kept there until it reached its boiling point. It was still, like most of the others, in its experimental stage and he had no definite proof that it would work; but he believed he'd researched it enough that it should. Yes, this was the one he wanted, and he was going to use it on that girl, as soon as he had the chance, and he knew now that he would have a perfect opportunity later that night when the others had gone to bed. Oh, he knew that Methos wouldn't forget what had happened that morning, and he would probably try to stop Kronos, but that was Methos' problem; he always thought he knew better than the others, and Methos would have to learn to get over that. Tonight, Kronos knew as he looked down at the glass tube in his hand, his experiment would finally be properly tested, and that girl was just the specimen he was looking for.

* * *

"Okay," Methos said, "Let's think about this for a minute…nobody fitting either this girl's description, or the modus operandi of whoever was holding her captive, can be found in the Watcher chronicles, or in the police archives. She is not listed as currently missing from anywhere, meaning either she isn't missing, or she is and whoever had her is just glad to be rid of her. And to top it off, we've got the damn Murphy's Law interrupting any further attempts to identify her."

"Sounds about right," Caspian told him.

"Well, got anymore bright ideas?" Methos asked.

"One," he answered, "We could always tie her up and dump her over the state line, we'd be rid of her and it could never be tied back to us."

"See? This is why we don't let you have a pet," Methos remarked cynically, "But there's one thing I'd like to know."

"What's that?" Caspian asked.

"The first night she was here…what was she doing up in the attic?"

"Hiding from us."

"I don't know…she'd obviously been in here a while, she had the opportunity to break in and out of this place more than once, she had to know the layout of the house…so what was she stomping around up there for?"

"I don't know," Caspian said, "Nothing was out of place up there."

"Are you sure?" Methos asked.

Caspian saw that look on Methos' face and he rolled his eyes, grumbling, "We're spending more time up in that attic than any other room in the whole damn house."

"Come on," Methos pulled his brother up and they cut through the dining room out to the hall and headed up the stairs.

When they reached the third floor, they made short work of finding the right room.

"We were in this one and Kronos was in the next one," Methos remembered as they headed in and gestured and pointed around the room, "And we came in through the side door, so we were here, he was there and she was here…"

"What are you doing?" Caspian asked, "Recreating the night, or laying out a football game plan?"

Methos looked around the room and went to the door adjoining that room to the next, "She had to know this was here, she knew we came in and she couldn't have heard us, we were too quiet…so she was probably next door too."

"This reminds me of the part of my job that I _hate_," Caspian told Methos, "Covering every square inch of a crime scene looking for something and almost always finding nothing…what the hell are we looking for anyway?"

"I don't know," Methos responded, "Let me think…we heard her, she was walking around up here, dropping that foot every step she took, and what else? It sounded like the whole damn place was being ripped apart."

That was when an idea hit him. He went over to one of the trunks, unlocked it, opened it and slammed the lid shut. The sound didn't match what he'd heard that night. He looked around the trunk to see if anything looked out of place.

"Aha!"

"Aha what?" Caspian asked.

"Look," Methos pointed down to the floor by the trunk.

There were some black marks in the floor, indicating that the trunk had been clumsily moved recently. He checked the next trunk, and on the floor by it were similar markings, and over on the other side of the room, he checked out the table and saw it also had dark marks on the floor near its feet.

"She was moving everything out and putting everything back," Methos said.

"Great, but why?" Caspian wanted to know.

"I don't know…she couldn't have been looking for anything, could she?"

"If she was, she clearly didn't find it," Caspian replied, "There's nothing around here worth finding, especially not up here."

Methos looked around the room once more and took in every square inch of the place; decorated over the years by the things they'd brought out of their pasts, every item in the room a piece of memorabilia from a certain point in their lives. What could it all have to do with that kid? That was the one question he didn't know the answer to.

* * *

"I'm trying to consider what's going on here from every possible angle," Methos told Caspian as they headed down the stairs again, "I'm trying to conceive every possible reason for this, and a few that are impossible."

"Well that's great," Caspian dryly remarked, "In your next life you can get a job writing mystery novels."

"I'm serious," Methos said, the only other noise in the house besides their bickering being the noise of their boots clattering against the stairs on the way down to the first floor.

By the time they reached the foot of the stairs, they were about to bite each other's heads off, and that continued as they made their way into the kitchen. They were oblivious to Silas's presence there until he got between the two of them and threatened to beat them both into the floor if they didn't shut up.

"What's eating you?" Methos asked, then quickly added as Caspian started to talk, "Shut up, Caspian."

It was then that they noticed the girl was in the room as well; seated over at the table in a change of Kronos' clothes and looking bored out of her mind.

"What's she doing down here?" Caspian asked.

"She went for a little walk," Silas sarcastically remarked, "Or rather crawl."

Methos felt his eyes strain as they widened, "You pushed her down the stairs?"

"I don't know why you're surprised," Silas said, "She's like a cat, she lands on all fours."

Methos went over to the table and looked the girl over. She looked at him but didn't make eye contact with him. Methos reached out and grabbed her hand and turned it over, showing a new bruise starting to form.

"She landed alright, but hard from the looks of it," he commented. It was then that he noticed the bruise was of an odd shape, "What is this? The top of the banister?"

"The corner of the top stair," Silas answered, "Apparently she falls at an angle."

Methos let go of the girl's hand and said only in response to his brother, "You know sometimes you worry me."

"You worry too much, Methos," Silas told him.

"I've been telling him that for years," Caspian added, "But did anybody listen? Nooooo."

"Oh shut up, Caspian," the other two brothers told him.

"Hey, what do you know?" Methos asked, smiling a little, "For once it's not me getting yelled at."

* * *

Methos made the rounds of checking everything before he went to bed that night; making sure the doors were locked, the windows were closed, the lights were out, and above all else, that he was the last one up.

Of course he knew, if Kronos had his mind set on having that girl in his bed again, that's just what he would do. Unfortunately he didn't have any grounds to try and interfere, and he knew it. The days of _we share everything_ were thousands of years in the past, but the fact remained that none of them had any idea who that girl was, and in that regard she belonged to nobody, meaning she was up for the taking of anybody who wanted her, and that just happened to be Kronos. Of course, he knew he had the option of taking the girl up with him for the night, putting her in his room…but he also knew if he did that, he'd be open to the scrutiny of his brothers; his reasons for doing it wouldn't matter, he'd be made out to be no better than Kronos, and he knew he couldn't fight that when he didn't have any proof of just what _did_ happen the other night.

And then there was always that third option, he was too well aware of. True, this girl, whoever she was, whatever she was, she clearly had no idea what she would become some day; she couldn't run, she couldn't call out for help and she was clearly outnumbered and could easily be overpowered, but her will was strong and she had proven herself capable of doing what she saw necessary to protect herself when she saw fit. The fact that when examining her, they'd found no evidence of sexual assault, said to Methos that _that_ was one thing she hadn't been subjected to, let alone forced to adapt to; so it stood to reason if she felt threatened in any way, she would attack Kronos, or at least try to…that was the one thing that she couldn't do quietly and they all knew that from personal experience.

And maybe he was wrong. Maybe nothing _had_ happened, but if that were the case, what the hell _was_ Kronos doing with her last night? His brother certainly hadn't made any attempt to clear the air, of course Kronos was never much for talking, and he never liked having to explain himself. Especially, Methos knew, when he felt his authority being questioned by his own brothers, he _hated_ that.

He stood by the couch and looked down at the girl who was in a dead sleep and at face value, didn't seem to have a care in the world. He knew nothing could be further from the truth, but it was late, he was tired and he didn't feel like sitting up the whole night to find out what Kronos wanted with Sleeping Beauty there. Sure it was heartless on his part, but it was still one of his sides, and to deny any part of himself would be to deny himself in whole. As he reached the foot of the stairs, he stopped and craned his neck around to look back to the living room. He'd keep an ear open for any unusual noises in the night, and if he heard anything coming from Kronos' room, he'd deal with the matter then, not before.

What Methos had forgotten was that when the house was built, several of the rooms, Kronos' specifically, had been made virtually soundproof. That was one thing in Kronos' favor for the night. About an hour after Methos had come upstairs and fallen asleep, Kronos left his room on the other side of the hall and made his way down the stairs in the dark and returned to the living room. There the girl remained, asleep and unaware of what was to become her fate. He jerked the girl out of sleep and pulled her to her feet and dragged her out into the hall and up the stairs and over to his room, where he promptly locked the door behind them.

Once inside, Kronos made short work of stripping the girl of her clothes. She struggled with him over the matter, but it was a quiet matter quickly resolved when he locked an arm around her throat and cut off her air. Just before she fell into unconsciousness, he let go of her and removed her clothes and pulled her over to the bed, where he threw her down, gagged her and chained her wrists to the headboard and spread her legs apart to chain her ankles at the footboard.

The girl briefly struggled with the chains but it was to no avail. As she lay there squirming and wriggling, trying to figure a way out, Kronos went over to the table on the other side of the room and picked up the vial he'd collected from the basement. The girl saw it, and while she didn't know what it was, she had a good idea of what was going to happen to her. Her eyes widened and she tried to scream, but very little noise made it past the gag in her mouth. She continued pulling and jerking at the chains but it did no good, though Kronos delighted in watching her struggle.

"This time my dear," he said with an evil smirk on his face as he closed in on her, "You're not going anywhere…no clever escapes, nothing lying around for you to try and bash me over the head with…oh no," he shook his head as that sinister grin widened, "This time, you're mine."

He reached the bed and in one move, jumped on the bed and straddled her waist, throwing his body weight on her and pinning her flat against the mattress. She groaned and tried to scream at the sudden weight pressing down on her, but it was quickly forgotten as she saw him take the lid off the vial and hold the small glass bottle directly over her chest.

Slowly, he turned the vial upside down and the first few drops slowly dripped out of the bottle's spout and landed between her breasts, and she screamed through the gag as her skin started to burn. A few more drops landed on her skin below that, and the burning got worse. But she knew Kronos was only toying with her; he snapped off the spout and let the acidic liquid pour directly out over the length of her body. Tears sprang forth from her closed eyes as she screamed as loud as the gag would allow, which still wasn't loud enough to be heard by anybody else in the house. The look on Kronos' face told her that this was just the beginning and that it was going to be a long night from hell.


	7. Chapter 7

The echo of a scream was ringing in Methos' ears. He sprang up in bed and looked around and saw that he'd fallen asleep with his lights on again. Well why not? he asked himself, he'd already spent over a million and a half nights of his life plunged into complete darkness, now that he could see what he was falling asleep to, he liked to take advantage of the opportunity.

But what was the noise he had heard? Had it been real, or was he dreaming? What time was it? It was still dark outside but anymore that didn't account for much. He found the clock and saw it was early in the morning; very early, 4:30 A.M.

Part of him was convinced he had only been dreaming, but he didn't want to take the chance. He got up, dressed and headed out into the hall to see what was going on. Caspian and Silas's rooms were still dark, but a crack of light shone under Kronos's door. Already Methos was regretting what he might find, but he turned the knob and went in. The first thing he saw was his brother's back. Kronos turned around and saw Methos and asked him, "What are you doing in here?"

Methos didn't answer him, he looked past Kronos to the bed and saw the girl in it, covered only in a sheet, and she was asleep, or unconscious, he didn't know which.

"Again?" Methos asked as he turned around to face Kronos, "You are relentless, you know that?"

Kronos wasn't in the mood. With an annoyed look on his face, he asked his brother, "Why don't you shut up and take a closer look?"

The two brothers went over to the bed and Kronos pulled back the sheet. The girl was rolled on her side and curled in a ball. Kronos rolled her over onto her back and Methos saw what Kronos was talking about. His eyes opened as wide as they could and he felt his bottom jaw separating oh so slightly from his top.

The autopsy scars on the girl's chest and abdomen were gone. All that remained was a faint trace of new pink skin that spanned the Y mark of her body.

"How?" was the only word Methos could think of.

"One of my more successful experiments, dear brother," Kronos answered with a knowing smirk on his face, "For years I've been trying to come up with an acidic solution that will eat away damaged skin but leave the healthy skin intact as well as everything else," he pointed to his own scar, "Photography becoming a worldwide sensation a century ago has increased my need to get rid of this so I can fade into the background as easily as you and the others do, as you can imagine, that hasn't been so easy for the last few decades."

That was something Kronos had never really brought up with him. He'd made a few passing comments over the centuries about if he could get rid of his scar, but Methos didn't know, though he had suspected that Kronos had thought that deeply about the matter. He certainly didn't know, though knowing Kronos, he shouldn't have been surprised by it, that Kronos was working on a chemical solution to that little annoyance.

The first thing that came to Methos's mind that he wanted to say was, 'I don't know, I'm not sure I'd like you so much without the scar', more of his usual sarcastic repartee, but he couldn't, his attention was still on this girl and seeing that large, gaping, fresh, infected incision gone.

"That's what you were doing the other night?" Methos asked him, "Preparing for this?"

"Just making sure that there weren't any other areas to cover," Kronos replied, "As hard as it is to conceive, I wanted to make sure that she didn't have something even worse that I could try it on."

"And it worked," Methos was still astonished by the results.

"Not without its downside though," Kronos told him, "Apparently it's still quite painful to endure…understandable though, we're all familiar with what it's like to have acid eating away at your flesh piece by piece like a swarm of termites in a large oak."

Methos was starting to get the picture, "And you didn't bother putting her under before you did it, did you?"

"Wouldn't be much point in that as this is still an experiment," Kronos insisted, "I wanted to see _just_ want kind of reaction she would give me."

"And?" Methos asked.

"Were she not tied to the bed during the procedure, she probably would've destroyed everything in the room," he answered.

Methos placed his hand on the girl's cheek and saw she didn't react to the touch. "What's wrong with her now?"

"Nothing, she's sedated _now_," Kronos answered.

"You would've made a horrible dentist," Methos commented with a snort.

"Yes, but not a bad butcher," Kronos responded, "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to make a new batch of this stuff to try on myself, it took the whole bottle to fix her."

Fix her? Methos shook his head when he heard that, no, Kronos might have been able to repair the exterior damage, but interior, that was always the damage beyond salvaging, and they all should've known that.

* * *

It was several more hours before the girl finally woke up and when she did, and she saw what had happened to her, she spent several minutes standing in front of the mirror looking at her new skin.

"Well," Kronos remarked from where they sat on the other side of the room, watching her, "It's cheap entertainment but it's still one hell of a view."

Methos tried to look away but found he couldn't. He was as amazed with what he saw and the girl was too. He tried to laugh it off and repeat his line of Kronos being an old pervert, but found it difficult because he was also seeing the same things that his brother did. How long had it been? It didn't matter, he wouldn't…he knew there had been some truth in Caspian's smartass remark the other day, but he didn't get to be 5,000 years old by lack of willpower. He struggled to remind himself that in his days as a doctor, he never allowed himself to get involved with a patient, no matter what, and now things weren't much different.

The girl caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and she turned to look back at him. He tried not to make eye contact with her. There was something about those eyes, and that face, he would swear he had seen that face 100 times before, and every time, those women, all from different points in time and all from different walks of life; and every one of them, when put in a compromising situation such as this one was now, all of them looked at him with those haunting eyes that just said they'd rather crawl under a rock and die. Not this one however, Methos could tell just by looking at her that she was too far gone for that. Her eyes said as much, it wasn't the _exact_ same as he had seen before, every time before, those eyes had something in them that was missing now, what was it? Some trace left of their innocence? Their dignity? Something that had stayed preserved in them up until this point, but Methos could tell just by looking at this girl that she possessed none of those traits and clearly had lost them a long time ago. All the same, she turned away from the mirror and surprised him by grabbing the sheet off the bed and wrapping it around herself.

"Looks like the show's over," Methos said to his brother.

The girl went around to the other side of the bed and started picking up some of Kronos' clothes to change into. Without unwrapping the sheet, she stepped into a pair of his jeans and slipped into one of his T-shirts before removing the sheet and discarding it on the bed. As she picked up Kronos' jacket, she felt something hit her in the back of the head and she fell to the ground screaming. Kronos yanked the leather jacket out of her hand, saying only, "Give me that."

"Possessive much?" Methos asked as he walked up behind his brother, "Though that reminds me of something I thought I'd bring up with you."

Kronos turned back to him, "What?"

Methos pulled his brother close to him and said into his ear what he was thinking. Kronos looked at his brother as he spoke, then moved one eye over to look back at the girl as he considered what his brother was saying.

"I suppose you're right, but how do you propose to do that?" Kronos asked.

Methos reached into his pocket and pulled out a measuring tape. Kronos glared at him and sarcastically remarked, "You just think of everything, don't you?"

"I try," Methos answered.

The girl got up as the two men approached her again. Kronos grabbed her from behind and wrestled her out of the shirt and locked his arms around her chest in an attempt to hold her still, but she struggled and screamed and when he lifted her off her feet, she swung her legs out and kicked Methos. What followed was a half hour long wrestling match between the three people and nobody came out of it the winner.

"Well that sucked," Methos said as they left his room.

"Anymore bright ideas, genius?" Kronos asked.

"Yeah, I say we just get her some clothes and we'll worry about size later," Methos answered.

Kronos let out a humorless snort of a laugh and murmured, "That should be interesting."

"Of course, for some obvious reasons I think it'd be better if I took her into town with me," Methos said.

"And what if she tries to run off again?" Kronos asked.

"Do you really think she would?" Methos asked.

"I just thought of something…did you notice that this morning she wasn't hobbling around the room?" Kronos asked him, "I hadn't noticed it at the time."

"Neither did I," Methos realized, but he didn't seem put off on the idea, "I'll just keep a close eye on her." He turned to look back and added, "Maybe I'll take Caspian with me, just to make sure."

"Oh sure, nothing could go wrong that way," Kronos scoffed.

* * *

Kronos spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon down in the basement working on a new bottle of his acid and hoping to have as much success with it as the last batch. Around 2 o' clock he heard a lot of noise upstairs and assumed it meant that Methos and Caspian were back with the girl and trying to put her in some clothes. This was an event he had to see for himself; he would get back to his work later. He went upstairs to see what all the noise was about, and upon entering the living room he saw that his two brothers had managed to wrestle the girl into a pair of jeans and a bra, but that seemed to be all the more progress they had made so far.

"Well now," Kronos cynically said with a mischievous look in his eyes, "That's attractive."

"Ha ha," Methos dryly replied, "Very funny."

Looking over the mess of clothes that were scattered and tossed all over the room, Kronos picked up one shirt and saw it was so low cut it would only come up enough to cover the bottom half of the bra she wore. "Don't tell me, let me guess," he said to Methos, "You thought of this all by yourself."

It was clear from the look on Methos' face that he wasn't in the mood for jokes. His only response to his brother was, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Certainly," Kronos remarked, glaring at the girl, "This picture alone is worth a thousand words easily."

Of course the girl said nothing but she closed her eyes and scrunched her face up into a mock smile like a cat before opening her eyes and restoring her face to its usual sour disposition.

"Where did you take her?" Kronos asked.

"A small thrift shop where there are no questions asked and no cameras to pick up anyone's picture," Methos answered, then he added directly into Kronos' ear, "You know, Kronos, I've been thinking it over and I think it would be a good idea if she spent the night with Caspian tonight."

Kronos looked at him and only smirked and said, "I like the way you think, brother."

* * *

Kronos and Methos may have been pleased with Methos' idea, but Caspian was not. Bright and early the next morning he stormed into Methos' room and looked ready to kill him. Methos had left the lights on through the night again and had been up for a few minutes already when Caspian came barging in.

"Sleep well?" Methos asked, feigning innocence.

"I'm going to kill you," Caspian told him, "You _knew_ that thing bites in her sleep, didn't you?"

"That's right," Methos answered with a small laugh, "Payback's a bitch, isn't it?"

Caspian growled at Methos and was about to choke him when he was hit on the head with something heavy. Methos watched as Caspian fell down and saw the girl was standing behind him, carrying a large and heavy candle holder. Methos laughed and then he saw that the girl, who had staggered into the room like a zombie, wasn't even awake. Caspian hadn't been knocked out by the blow but he was dazed momentarily, Methos grabbed him and helped him to his feet just as the girl picked up a bronze paperweight off of Methos' dresser and bashed Caspian in the head with it and he fell down again.

"She's more dangerous asleep than she is awake," Methos said as he helped Caspian up again.

"Oh yeah? Well I'm going to fix that," Caspian said as he went over to the girl and punched her in the face. She fell back and hit the floor and woke up and saw the two men standing over her.

Both men got on either side of her, grabbed her arms, pulled her up and took her downstairs and dropped her in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. The girl laid her head down on the table and went back to sleep.

"Another day and no day_light_ to show for it," Methos said as he looked out the window at the gray surroundings, "Sometimes I wonder if the sun will ever come out again."

"Not that it would make much difference for you," Caspian told him.

Methos turned and looked at him, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I could never figure out how a person could spend 2,000 years in the desert, burning in the sun every damn day, and never change colors," Caspian said to him, "I don't suppose you'd care to explain that one."

"You're one to talk," Methos replied, "If your eyes were a different color you could pass perfectly as an albino alligator."

The two were yelling at each other again and about to knock their heads together; all of which their guest at the table was completely oblivious to. She was still at the table, albeit awake then, when Caspian returned a few hours later and sorted through a junk drawer under the sink, apparently looking for something. The others could be heard in a room close by, but nobody was paying any attention to the girl as she got up from the table and staggered over to the oven and reached for the knife rack over the oven and pulled out a steak knife with a particularly sharp blade; then, concealing the knife, she crept up behind Caspian who was still standing with his back to her.

* * *

In the living room, Methos and Kronos were sorting through a box of groceries Silas had brought up from in town; also in the box was the town's daily newspaper, all smashed and buried under everything else. Methos straightened up the pages of the paper and turned it up and over to find the front page, and when he did, all the blood ran out of his face.

"Oh shit," was all he could say.

"What is it?" Kronos asked.

Methos held the paper out to him like he was worried of catching something off of it, "Look at this."

Kronos took the paper and saw what his brother had seen, and while his response wasn't the same, he too became a slight shade paler.

On the front page of the newspaper was a picture of the girl, her hair was longer and she looked ratty, but it was the same girl, no mistake about it, and under her picture was the headline POLICE SEARCH FOR ESCAPED KILLER, and below that was an article explaining that the police were in pursuit of 21-year-old Francesca Giardello, who escaped from the Grayson Institute for the Criminally Insane, where she was serving a life sentence for the brutal murders of three people earlier that year.

Methos had just opened his mouth and started to speak when they both heard a scream that was horrifying even by their standards, and it was coming from the kitchen. They ran in and immediately saw the back door was open, then they saw Caspian lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood; Methos knelt down to see what was the matter and pulled the knife out of Caspian's back and came to a sickening conclusion that Caspian's spinal cord had been completely severed, and it looked like, Methos told Kronos, it was done in one move.

Kronos ran out the backdoor and jumped off the porch and looked around the yard but didn't see the girl anywhere, but he did see Silas around the front. Silas told Kronos he hadn't seen anything, and a few moments later Caspian and Methos came out to join them and Caspian told Kronos that the girl had run out of the house after stabbing him. Still, Kronos doubted she could've gotten far, so they searched the grounds, but didn't find anything.

In the middle of the hunt, Caspian got an idea and climbed up to the roof for a better look. The roof itself was another labyrinth in itself; arches and points everywhere with flat surfaces in between. He climbed over one arch and looked around but wasn't seeing anything from this viewpoint either. Then, he felt a weak quickening, he heard something, and turning around, saw the girl rising up behind another arch; she threw something at him and the heavy weight hit him and threw him off balance and he fell off the roof and made a crash landing on the front lawn.

Kronos and Methos heard the body hit the ground and ran over to see what had happened and they saw Caspian lying on the ground, then heard something from above. They looked up and saw the girl standing near the edge of the roof and she called out in a bellowing voice, "Well look at that! Christmas came early this year, my _warden's_ dead!"

Methos looked up at the girl completely dumbstruck, Kronos grabbed him and had Methos follow him as they climbed up to the roof to corner the girl. When she saw them coming, she dashed over to another corner of the roof, but the tiles she stepped on broke off underneath her and that part of the roof became slick and she lost her balance and also fell off the roof and her body hit the ground hard. Methos and Kronos went over to the edge and looked down and saw the girl sprawled out in the yard, her arms at her sides in a mock crucifixion posture and her eyes were open wide as if in shock, and she said nothing now but only moaned in pain. Standing by the body was Silas, who looked at her, and then up at his brothers and without saying anything, wondered what the hell at happened. Methos and Kronos wondered the same thing as they turned and looked at each other.


	8. Chapter 8

The girl hadn't broken anything in the fall, but she had bashed up both arms and one leg and had trouble moving and Methos and Silas pulled her up and walked her back into the house, where once inside, they all demanded answers from their guest. The girl groaned as they set her down in a chair at the dining room table.

"So," Kronos finally said to her, "You _can_ talk."

"Yes I can talk, you idiot," she replied, "I can talk, I can move, I can run," she sarcastically added, "I can also mime."

Caspian hit her in the side of the head and told her to shut up.

"Why did you come here?" Kronos wanted to know.

"Well it sure as hell wasn't for the pleasant hospitality," she told him.

"If you could talk this whole time why didn't you say anything?" Methos asked her.

"Never mind that, if you could walk and run, why have you been hobbling around this place all week?" Caspian added.

"Because I wanted to see just how long it would take you boobs to put it all together without any cues from me, and it only took you a week," she clearly was not impressed, "What finally clued you in?"

Caspian was tired of her smart remarks and he hit her again, but this time she retaliated by hitting him. Her arm swung clumsily and she couldn't ball her hand up into a fist tightly but she hit him regardless. Before he could strike her again, Methos had the presence of mind to ask to see his brothers in the other room alone for a minute. From where they stood in the kitchen, they could still keep an eye on the girl and make sure she didn't try for the door. Methos said to Caspian and Silas, "You two have been working in the police force here for a long time now, are either of you familiar with that case in the paper?"

"No," Caspian answered.

Silas shook his head, "The name's familiar though, it's not our jurisdiction, I think I read about it when it came out…if I remember right, the three people murdered were a man, a woman and a child in a diner over in Seacouver."

"That would mean a crowd, not enough time to do anything particularly brutal like the paper said," Methos commented.

"You know how people are today, _any_ manner of killing someone is considered cruel and unusual, inhumane, barbaric," Caspian went off the list.

"Pointlessly barbaric," Methos said and he quoted, "Millions of deaths are a statistic but one is a tragedy."

"They have no stomach for anything anymore," Caspian said, "It's a wonder any of them even eat meat."

"We're getting off base here," Methos told him, "How in the hell could that girl wind up in an insane asylum? If she did kill anybody, we all know very well that she's in her right mind, she knows exactly what she's doing."

"I'm more interested in finding out _how_ she broke out," Kronos said, "Is it just _her_, or is the whole city full of these nuts running around?"

"Do you really think she'll tell us?" Methos asked.

"There's only one way to find out."

They went back in the dining room, where the girl hadn't moved from her chair, and Methos said point blank, "How did you escape from that asylum?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she asked smugly.

Caspian kicked her foot and told her to shut up.

The girl retaliated by grabbing his wrist and turning it around and said, "I seem to recall taking about three inches of flesh out of this wrist and here it is again, good as new, would you care to explain that one or why you're up and walking around again after I cut your spinal cord in two like an old rope?"

Caspian pulled away from her, and Kronos demanded to know, "Why did you come here?"

She lowered her head and answered, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Something occurred to Methos and he leaned in towards Caspian to ask him, but Kronos told him to speak up so they could all hear it.

"I said why did the newspaper only report her missing _now_ when she's been gone a week? What the hell is going on over in Seacouver?"

"Oh they finally got around to that, did they?" the girl asked as she picked her head up again, "I knew you were too stupid to figure it out on your own…what're they saying about me, anyway?"

This time, Methos hit her in the head and told her, "Nothing that concerns you, Francesca."

"Who?" she asked.

"You."

"What did you call me?" she sprang to her feet like he'd insulted her.

"Now don't play dumb, that's your name, Francesca Giardello."

"Giardello?" she repeated the word like it was an obscenity, "A Giardello, me? That's not my name, not by a long shot."

"Oh no?" Methos found the newspaper and tossed it down in front of her, "Then explain that."

She gazed at the front story and looked back at them and said, "That's my picture but that's not my name. Giardello, of all the absurd ideas! Do I look like an Italian to you?" to emphasize her point, her hands flew into a series of wild gestures as she spoke.

Methos was starting to get a headache, he hated these mind games.

"That's your picture but it's not your name?" he repeated.

"That's right, nothing they've printed in that story about me's right," she told them.

"Nothing, huh?" Methos looked over the article and said, "It says you're 21, is that wrong also?"

"Hell yes it is, they had to say that to put my picture in the paper, I'm only 16!" she told them.

Methos felt like he'd just fallen through the looking glass. "What?"

"You heard me," she said, "And my name isn't Francesca Giardello either, it's Fagan Willerby."

Methos looked to Kronos and asked to see him in the next room again. They went back into the kitchen, leaving the others out in the dining room, and the first thing Kronos had to say was, "Well?"

"Fagan is hardly a common name, it was the name of a lion that lived over 40 years ago, I highly doubt she'd know that," Methos said, "The whole thing sounds too crazy not to be true."

"You really believe her?" Kronos sounded surprised.

"I think so," Methos replied, "It'll depend on what she tells us next."

* * *

"I suppose next you're going to say you didn't kill those three people either," Methos said when they returned to interrogate the girl.

"What three people?" she asked.

"The three people in the diner," Methos pointed to the paper, "It's in there, two parents and a small child, you're going to tell us you didn't kill them?"

She shook her head, "No."

"And what, you were never supposed to be in that asylum either?" Methos asked.

"All I know is they put me away on murders I didn't commit," she said, "They made sure I could never be found."

"You want to explain that again?" he asked, "From what you've said, with your picture there's a name and an age that aren't yours, the murders credited to you, you didn't commit, how is that possible?"

"Well it is," she insisted, "I keep telling you morons, I'm Fagan Willerby, and I'm 16 years old, I never killed any family in any diner…"

"Then why were you arrested?"

"Because they needed a scapegoat and I was a good target for it," she said.

"How?"

"I'm not the only one, everybody in Grayson's like that, all in for things they never did, under names that aren't theirs."

"Right, how does that work?" Methos asked, "People check the names against the fingerprints taken at the time of arrest."

"That's just it," Fagan told them, "You check my prints again the ones on file for the name Francesca Giardello, you'll see they don't match."

Now they were all lost. "How is that possible?" Caspian asked.

"There's something screwy going on over there," she said, "The police in Seacouver who arrested me are screws in the truest form, they busted me, took me in, they had a friend whose prints aren't on file get printed, filed them under my name, and they changed my name so nobody involved could ever find out who I was or where I came from. Francesca Giardello doesn't exist, she never did, they gave me that name so they wouldn't have to worry about anybody finding me in that nuthouse. When I was taken to court for the indictment, I told the judge that wasn't my name, the prosecutor said I was stoned out of my mind and didn't know anything, and the judge believed him. I got railroaded, somebody said I was crazy, so instead of throwing me in prison, they bussed me off to Grayson, nobody would believe this place…compared to it, Arkham Asylum looks like the fun house at Coney Island. This place sends mental hospitals back at least a hundred years."

"That would explain it," Caspian said.

Fagan glared at him and told him, "You don't know the half of it, _nobody_ does. That place is worse than the death camps, nobody knows what's going on over there, and nobody gets out alive to tell either."

"Except you," Methos said.

"Nothing I ever did warranted the treatment I got," she said, "No matter what those damn papers said, I never kill kids, they haven't done anything to deserve it."

Methos was surprised, "But you have killed."

"Oh sure," she said, "I've got a good track record going, 15 men so far." They could tell that this time she was being serious as she spoke.

"How?" Methos asked.

"All in different ways," she answered, "The first one was so simple and over so quickly, it was very anticlimactic and very unsatisfying."

"And how old were you?"

"I was 13," she said, "Choked a man to death, broke his neck at the last second, and do you want to know why I did it? Because he annoyed me, and he was a lot less irritating to listen to than you four morons have been."

Caspian moved to hit her again but Kronos pulled him back, saying only, "Let her talk. I want to hear this."

"Oh, you want all the sordid details, do you?" Fagan asked, then she laughed, "Well I'll gladly give them to you. Let me think, it's been a while…the second one I killed…he was a real bastard, I filled a cup with lighter fluid, went up to him, threw it on them and started lighting matches and throwing them at him. Oooooh he screamed so much, and then when he finally caught on fire…"

Methos listened to what she said and he couldn't believe it. He may have killed 10,000 people, hell, he'd killed more than that, but that was 2,000 years ago, he was different now, and now it was turning his stomach to hear the graphic descriptions coming from the young girl who relived every murder she committed with such nostalgia and such passion that she seemed almost orgasmic by the recount. He listened as she talked about beating one man to death with a tire iron, another she had thrown acid in his face before finally killing him; there had been another that she had stabbed 200 times and she added how any time the blade hit against a bone, it sent a small vibration back to her teeth that knocked them together. Then there was another that hadn't been anything special, she had only stomped that one to death, but it had been a very satisfactory death. Another time, she had taken a wire out of a piano and in a spur of the moment, wrapped it around the man's neck and tightened it until she had practically cut his head off with it; and then another, who she had spent hours torturing, one by one breaking every single bone in his body before finally putting him out of his misery.

"And then the others are the real kick in the head," Fagan concluded, "Those are the ones that the bodies will never be found."

"Why not?" Methos asked.

"I was living down by the docks at that time, I liked to rent boats and go out on the water, and there was a place that sold chum for fishing, the idea was wait until dark, always on nights when there was no moon out, and make sure nobody was around…get the guy on the boat and go out into the sea…knock him off the boat and when he's flopping around in the water, pour the chum on him. Sharks attack within five feet away from the shore, they can smell a drop of blood from a mile away, there was never long to wait for the water to bubble and then those people became Jaws' midnight snack. Sharks have been documented as eating entire suits of armor, they'd never leave behind remains of one measly person."

"And you figured all of that out by 15?" Methos asked.

"Child prodigy, I like it," Kronos commented.

Fagan sneered at him and replied, "You would."

"And you're saying that everybody in that place was set up like you were?" Methos asked, "Are they all like you or did they actually not kill anybody?"

"It doesn't matter what they did or didn't do," Fagan said, "Because nobody's ever going to find out, they're going to die in that place. They're all ripe for the picking, they either have no families or they're only related to the shut-ins at the state prison and so have no credibility, and no friends in court. Either way, if they disappear, nobody's going to know, let alone care. They got no money, no authority, no connections, nobody owes them any favors, nobody remembers their faces…they get busted on trumped up charges of murders somebody else committed…then the police and the lawyers get a friend shrink to come in and tell the judge they're crazy, and the hospital mental wards are already full up with overpopulation. So Grayson's the only asylum in the town and it's easier than moving them somewhere into another city, so they go there…Grayson's miles away from civilization, nobody ever just stumbles upon that place, and that's intentional. The staff running it are sadists you wouldn't imagine…"

"Why? What do they do?" Methos asked.

"As if you don't know already," Fagan told him, "Oregon boots, electroshock therapy," she lifted up her shirt and added, "Autopsy practice on living test dummies, you name it, they do it, and they know they can get away with it." She looked to Caspian and said, "You're exactly like the others."

"What others?"

"At the asylum, the…the leader, he's like you, one time another patient tried to stab him, grabbed a bunch of pencils and jammed them into his chest, but he lived, not only that he recovered, in a few minutes there was no hole sticking in the middle of his chest, just like you. He especially has some screwed up experiments in mind…he picks a bunch of people and kills them, and nobody knows what he does, but when he does kill them, the whole place explodes in sparks and the power surges. You'd think they were all getting the electric chair, like that song about Massachusetts and the lights go out, but that's one thing we know for fact that they _don't_ have there and that's the chair. So if it's not that, what the hell is going on when he kills them?"

Kronos and Methos turned and looked at each other and without either saying a word, they knew that this was not going to end well.

"We need to take this one step at a time," Methos said, "First, we'll find out if she's telling the truth about her arrest cover up, and then we'll set our sights on Grayson."

"That's a good idea," Caspian said, and then to Fagan he said, "Do you have any objections to that?"

"To what?" she asked.

"Having your prints taken to clarify what you've told us," he answered.

She looked at him funny. "Fingerprints? Oh sure," she nodded, "I'll give you fingerprints, a whole lot of them!" With that, she lunged at Caspian and wrapped her hands around his neck and they fell to the floor wrestling with each other.

Methos moved to step in and help, but Kronos stopped him and said, "Let them alone, I want to watch this."

Kronos, Methos and Silas watched as Caspian and the girl rolled around on the ground for several minutes, each trying to throw the other one off and/or choke the life out of each other, and then when that failed they both resorted to biting.

Methos chuckled humorlessly and said, "If ever we needed an apprentice."

"Well we don't," Kronos told him.

"It's too bad though," Methos told his brother, "She's got the heart for the work."

They finally stepped in and pulled the two bloodthirsty creatures off of each other, ending an even fight and no winner declared.

"That's enough out of you," Kronos said as he grabbed her neck and gradually tightened his hold, "Now you're going to hold still and get your prints taken so we can find out if you're lying to us or not."

"Why would I?" she asked, "Do you really think I'd make up something like that?"

"Everything else you've done turned out to be an act, why shouldn't this?" he demanded to know.

"Because I never lied to you about anything, you drew your own conclusions on that one," she told him.

Kronos squeezed her neck a little harder until she shut up, then he let go of her.

"Where do you come from originally?" Methos asked her.

"What's that matter?" she asked.

"Somebody had to know you somewhere," he said.

"I was living down in Salem for a while," she said.

"You don't sound like it."

"What?" she asked.

"You don't sound like a resident, you talk strange, where do you come from?" Caspian demanded to know.

She smugly answered, "Lots of different places."

Caspian moved to charge at her again but he was jerked back by his brother.

* * *

They got Fagan's prints on a card and Caspian headed back to the police station to run hers against the ones under her alias. While his brothers waited for him to return, they tried to find out more about their houseguest.

"You don't remember where you come from, do you remember your family?" Methos asked.

"Don't have one," she said, "I'm what you call a…a…a…a…"

Kronos hit her on the back to break up the stutter, "A what?"

"I'm what you'd call a foundling, had no parents, just wound up on somebody's doorstep one day I guess, or in the trash or something…somebody found me, they raised me, but I haven't seen them in several years."

At least that part came as no surprise to them.

"But you don't remember where you came from?" Methos asked.

"No, my memory's not so good, seems I was always moving around…" she laughed, "Could never sit still for too long, got bored and when I was bored I'd get into a lot of trouble."

Methos chuckled and remarked, "I wouldn't think what's been going on here for the past week could be called boring, though."

"My stay here hasn't been as crazy as you'd think," Fagan told him, "Ever since I came here, it's been the first time in four months that I've had access to water, soap, food, a bed, clothes, even your oddball idea of medical care…compared to Grayson Institute for the Criminally Insane, this place has been a Shangri-la."

That told Methos just how bad things had to be in the asylum for her present living conditions to be so tolerable.

"Yes, how _did_ you break out of there, anyway?" Kronos asked, "It sounds like the place is run very tightly."

"Tighter than a drunk in a wine cellar," Fagan said, "Nobody's managed to get out of there alive except me."

"But how?" Methos asked.

Before she could answer, Caspian returned and they saw that he looked sick.

"What happened?" Kronos asked.

"What'd you find out?" Methos asked.

"I checked the prints against the ones on file for Francesca Giardello…" he shook his head, "They're not even similar. I checked and there's only one Francesca Giardello on the records, the same one who fits the description in the paper and the picture of this one here," he pointed to Fagan.

"She was telling the truth," Methos said, "You know what that means."

"I do and I wish I didn't," Kronos replied.


	9. Chapter 9

"Where _is_ this asylum?" Methos asked Fagan.

"You'll never be able to find it," she said.

"Why do you think we're asking you?" he replied.

"Are you kidding me?" she asked, "I'm hoping to God I forget where it is, I have no intention of ever going back there. And I know how that sounds, but believe me by this time, most of the people locked up in that place are either dead already or death will be a sweet relief compared to how they are now."

"What about the others?" Methos asked, "Aren't there still new patients being administered there?"

"Oh, constantly!" she said, "We must have 500 people there right now, and always new ones coming in."

"But nobody knows where this place is?" Kronos said.

"I didn't say that, I said you'll never find it," she said, "Check all the town and state maps and directories, it's not listed anywhere."

"That's not possible," Methos said.

"You…" Fagan looked like she was about to burst out laughing, "You people regenerate your flesh and your bones in a mere matter of minutes and you want to tell me what's impossible?"

"Alright, _where_ is it?"

"Like I said, you'd never find it," she replied, "I'd have to take you there."

Methos and Kronos crowded in on her and said, "Well?"

"Well what?" she replied, "If you think I'm taking you two fruitcakes to see that place, you're nuttier than I am."

"Oh I'd say that was a safe bet from the beginning," Methos told her.

They heard somebody clearing his throat and saw it was Silas, who asked to see his brothers in the kitchen, immediately.

"Don't go anywhere," Kronos told Fagan.

"Very funny."

They joined Silas and Caspian in the kitchen and inquired what was the matter.

"If she's not going to tell us where the place is," Caspian said, "We'll have to find out ourselves, somebody has to know somewhere."

"Seacouver's out of your jurisdiction though," Methos said, "Let's assume she's telling the truth about the asylum, why would anybody tell us where it is?"

"Somebody has to know and we have to find it out," Silas told his brother, "I want to find out how far this thing has gone. We have a lot of missing person cases that have never been solved, most of the people missing are somewhere around that girl's age, some older but not by much. I want to know, are they all locked up in this mental hospital? If they are, are they still alive, or are they already dead? Will we even find any remains of them there when we finally get there? And going by what she said about the murders, it sounds like they've got a lot of Immortals up there to experiment on."

"Or pre-Immortals," Methos said, "In which case there would be no Watchers files on any of them yet."

"And there never will be," Kronos added.

"Which brings us to the next question, are all the people who have been disappearing from this state over the past couple years Immortals, and if they are, how many of them are even still alive?" Silas asked.

"But we've been over this before," Methos said, "Compared to what she went through in that loony bin, there's hardly anything we can do that will force her to talk."

"I don't know," Kronos replied, "I think there's a way, we just have to figure it out."

"Well if she didn't talk when you were burning her skin off," Methos reminded him, "I don't think she will now."

"However, you'll notice since she broke her cover and started talking, she hasn't stopped yet," Kronos said, "Maybe it'll slip out with a little persuasion."

"In the meantime," Methos addressed his other brothers, "If you two want to start picking through the hangnails on Seacouver's long arm of the law and see if any of them can tell you where Grayson is, go ahead."

"It'd be easier if we had someone to send up there," Caspian said.

Methos laughed and remarked, "Good luck with that." He turned and saw the slight, mischievous look of amusement on Kronos's face and asked, "And what bird are you trying to swallow, Heathcliff?"

"I've got an idea," Kronos told him, "About how we might be able to get the answers out of that kid."

"Oh don't tell me you've got a rubber hose saved over from the old days," Methos said.

"Contrary to popular belief, brother, I _am_ capable of more than just bashing in people's skulls," Kronos said, "That's the approach she's most likely expecting, but we're not going to lay a hand on her."

"Good, who knows where she's been?" Methos cynically remarked, "So what did you have in mind?"

"Nothing," Kronos answered.

"What?"

"As much as she's talking now, she's bound to trip over her tongue eventually," Kronos explained, "In the meantime we'll just stand by and screw with her head."

"Psychological warfare," Methos said, "I like it."

"Besides, there's plenty of other stuff I want to find out and I have a feeling she'll be only too eager to share that information with us," Kronos added.

* * *

Methos reappeared in the living room with an ominous smirk on his face and he carried a bottle in one hand and a couple of glasses in the other.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked.

"Depends, what is it?" Fagan asked.

She took the bottle from him and read the label. "Whiskey…no vodka, eh? Oh well, it'll do." She took the lid off and started guzzling it.

"Hey!"

Fagan spit it out in a mist and said, "Sorry," handing him the bottle.

"Never mind," he replied, then, taking another approach, "Have you been drinking long?"

"As far back as I can remember," she said, "Which isn't very far, I told you before my memory's not so good."

"Whose is?" he asked, "You said you were in Grayson for four months?"

"Oh yeah," she nodded, "Four full months in hell, all seven circles."

Kronos reentered the living room as Methos asked her, "What the hell did they do to you there?"

"You name it," she said, "Let's see, first when they bring everybody in they usually cut their clothes off…because you know, on the off chance that you _could_ escape," she snorted, "You'd have one hell of a time finding your way back to town like that. After that…every day blurs together, there's no beginning, no end, everything's just ongoing, nothing stops because the day's over…the butchers they call doctors take people off one or two at a time, and leave the rest just standing around waiting, wondering when they're next. One by one everybody's pinned down from the start, and shot full of drugs so they're zoned out and can't think and can hardly move, some they chain to the walls so they can't attack or try to run…and others, like me, they leave you in your clothes for a while and for a few days or weeks you get the Oregon boot treatment instead, absolutely no way you're going to run with that."

"Do they do that with everyone?" Methos asked.

"Only the most resilient people are put in the boots," she said, "The others they just chain up somewhere, for the most part everybody just blindly staggers around in circles, there are no beds, everybody sleeps huddled in piles on the floor, looks like Jonestown, they don't always feed you either, and what they _do_ feed you, it has bugs and maggots crawling through it. Sick."

"And who was the genius that tried playing doctor on you?" Kronos inquired.

"We don't know their names," she said, "With all the screaming and the noise, it's hard to hear when anybody talks."

"Well who's Grayson?" Methos asked.

"I don't know, I don't think the guy ever existed," Fagan answered.

Methos and Kronos looked at each other in exchanged confusion, and decided to move on. Kronos cleared his throat and said, "The incisions were still quite fresh when we found you, when did that happen?"

"Sometime before I left," Fagan answered as she poured a drink of whiskey, "No clocks, no windows, no daylight, no signs of outside life…I think two days maybe, who knows?"

"Was that the last straw?"

She laughed bitterly and said, "Well don't think everything leading up to it was tolerable, because it wasn't. But we didn't have any choice; I spent four months in that place, spent every day, every moment the guards weren't looking, trying to find a way out."

"Guards?"

"You don't think they'd leave the patients to just run around that place, do you?" Fagan asked, "Yeah, guards, or something, I don't know what you'd call them…they catch anyone who tried to escape or tried to attack the doctors and…I don't know what happened to them."

"Well what did they do with them?" Methos asked.

"The guards take them away somewhere and a lot of times you never see them again…I don't know where they go but they never come back."

"Well what did they do with the bodies?" Methos asked, "You _know_ they killed these people?"

"Oh yeah," she said, "Oddly enough, one thing the place does _not_ have, that's a crematorium."

"The bodies would pile up after a while, wouldn't they?"

"Oh yeah…not like Jonestown though," she said as she refilled her glass, "You know Jonestown, the bodies were piled up like a bunch of dirty laundry…this, I'm thinking more like Dachau."

"The death camp?"

"Er, no, the train cars there," Fagan answered, she looked to Kronos and said, "Remember the massacre there?"

"You do?" he inquired.

She shook her head, "That was before my time, but you remember."

"So where _were_ the bodies?" Methos asked.

"All piled up," she said, gesturing with her hand, "Pile, pile, pile, practically to the ceiling with them."

"But where? Not all over the building?"

"Oh noooo," she said as she shook her head, "No, they don't want you to _know_ when they're dead, they want to leave you guessing, wondering, wondering how long it takes, when somebody will be next, who will be next, how will they die…they pile them up where nobody goes and nobody can find them, but I found them."

Methos and Kronos had an idea they were getting close to the answer they wanted, Kronos suggested they get something stronger for their guest to drink. Methos' eyes seemed to light up with mischief and he disappeared out of the room momentarily and came back with a bottle of vodka. He poured her a glass and said, "So where _do_ they put the bodies when they kill them?"

"Oh it's horrible," Fagan said, her words slurred by now, "The asylum is about seven stories tall, and on the third floor there's the shower room, and nobody goes there…" she shook her head again to emphasize her point, "Nobody goes there…that's why nobody there's bathed since they get there…"

"You mean to tell me in a building that size that's housing hundreds of patients, they only have one shower room?" Methos asked.

"Only one we know about," she answered, "And nobody goes there…they don't make us shower like they do in prison, everybody doesn't go, only one or two people go at a time, sometimes a few more than that, but never many…" she looked at Kronos through the corner of her eye and murmured, "Auschwitz," and chuckled humorlessly.

Kronos glanced over at Methos and then back at the girl and said, "You're trying to tell me that they used a gas chamber there?"

"All I know is anybody who got sent to the shower room _never_ came back," Fagan said.

"I'm still having trouble getting this," Methos said, "There are hundreds of patients there, and how many doctors? How many guards? Not nearly enough that they'd be even."

"No," she said, "But how many guards in a prison? How many Nazis in the Holocaust? Nowhere _near_ the number of their victims, the number of the prisoners…it's always been that way…but when you first come in, you're disoriented, you don't know what's going on or where you are, then they shoot you full of stuff so you have no idea what's going on, from there it's very easy to get control over the masses. Usually though, they only drug everybody once, and once seems to be enough because after that, they're too weak to do much, weak from hunger, lack of sleep, everything…"

They noticed now that their guest seemed about ready to nod off as well, but they wouldn't let her sleep, they kept her awake and kept hammering her with questions.

"Why did you come here?" Kronos asked.

"I didn't come here on purpose, I never knew this place was here, I was just trying to get as far away from that place as I could," she said, "I thought the road I took would get me back into town," she snorted, "Boy was I wrong."

"How did you get in?" Methos asked, "We had the house locked up."

"I'll say you did," she said, "I see this place, only house in the area, and I notice there are no lights on, and there are no cars parked anywhere or in the garage behind the house…so I figure there's nobody here, of course the doors are locked," she rolled her eyes, "Of course…and I broke the window in the backdoor and undid the lock there and got in."

"But why was the front door open then when we came here?" Methos asked.

"I opened it," she answered, "I had to cover all possible exits and make sure I could get out of here if I had to…that would've been pretty bad if the front door of the place couldn't be opened."

"And what, you climbed out of the upstairs window when we got here?" Methos asked.

"I was figuring a way to get up to the third floor from the outside," she answered, "I have a little experience in that."

"Climbing?"

"Yeah," she answered, "So I set up the rope on the side so I could climb up to the roof and stay up there undetected…I never saw you guys come up to the house, but when I did find that out…" she shook her head, "I didn't want to leave, where could I go in that storm? And how far could I possibly get? So I figured I'd stay on here for a while, at least until the rain stopped."

"And what, you'd just stay on the roof for all that time?" Methos asked.

"So it wasn't much of a plan, had you four idiots scratching your heads plenty long," Fagan told him.

"When did you get back into the house after that night?" Kronos asked.

"Sometime during the night, I climbed in through one of the windows downstairs and stayed there to dry out," she answered.

"What about the knife?" Methos asked, "That unusual knife you had with you when you came here…where did you get it from?"

"It's like what the doctors use on people, it's one of their operating tools, I took it with me incase I ran into any trouble," she explained.

"And what about the clothes?" Kronos asked.

"I got them from the rag pile that everybody's clothes had gone into, they hadn't been cut off because they were in already such bad shape, they served their purpose in I was able to get away without it being anymore awkward than it was," she told them.

That went on for about an hour, and every chance they had they practically poured more vodka down her throat to keep her talking to the point she wasn't even sure of what she was saying. Finally it seemed that she had told them almost everything, and despite their attempts to keep her awake, she laid down on the floor and fell asleep. Methos and Kronos lifted her up and laid her on the couch, and Methos probed for one more answer.

"Fagan."

"Hmmm?" she asked, more through her nose than out her mouth.

"Where is the Grayson Asylum?" he asked.

"It's over the water," she answered before she fell unconscious.

* * *

"Over the water, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Kronos asked, "Half of Seacouver is _on_ the water, over it, what…"

"Okay, calm down," Methos told him, "Let's consider this for a minute…we presume Grayson _is_ in Seacouver…and she said it's miles away from civilization."

"Like what, the woods?"

"I'm thinking a higher altitude, up on a hill somewhere perhaps," Methos said, "That's over the water, isn't it?"

"How would you get there, though?" Kronos asked, "And what was that she said, nobody can find it by accident, that doesn't make any sense."

"I still think we're going to need her to take us there but I don't know how we're going to get her to do that," Methos told him.

Kronos didn't seem to hear him, he was looking around the room and gesturing with his hands like he was trying to pan it out, "Over the water, above the city…sounds more like a cliff than a hill…where're you going to find a cliff in Seacouver? That's the next question."

"Unless maybe she was too drunk to tell us right," Methos said.

"No," Kronos shook his head, "She started to become unintelligible but she wasn't incoherent, she was still very lucid, she knew what she was talking about."

Methos tried to think and he got an idea. He started rummaging through drawers until he found what he was looking for, a map of the general layout of the town.

"It's a couple of years old but we'll assume most of it is the same," Methos said as he pinned the map to the wall for a better look, "Now here's the civilization part of the town in the center, the charted territory, and this around it is as far as we know the uncharted territory, which would expand for several miles while staying in the vicinity. Now, she had to come from somewhere in here and make a wrong turn to wind up in _our_ territory…" he made a mark on the map where Seacouver bordered the town next to it, "Somewhere in here, however we don't know how long she was on the run and for all we know she could've covered a lot of ground, even in her condition."

The two Horsemen were so engrossed in their discussion that they hadn't noticed Fagan getting up from the couch and quietly slipping up the stairs. Once there, she returned to Methos's room, and having no one around to watch or stop her, she started doing a little investigating of her own; she went through all of his things and jerked open all the drawers on the nightstand and the dresser and jerked out and discarded his belongings all over the room.


	10. Chapter 10

Methos and Kronos were hoping for some new information when their brothers returned, but it was obvious right away from the looks on Silas and Caspian's faces that they had hit a particularly large wall in their search.

"Well?" Methos asked, worried he already knew the answer.

"The police in Seacouver seem to consider themselves a _very_ tightly knit bunch," Caspian answered as he took off his coat, "Amongst each other they yap like a bunch of mosquitoes, but to outsiders…" he shook his head, "Not a word. If we didn't have any cases that would pertain to their jurisdiction, they didn't have any information to volunteer."

"Did you get anything out of the girl?" Silas asked.

"Oh plenty," Kronos dryly answered, "But the only answer we could get as to where this place is, her response was it's over the water, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Over the water?" Caspian repeated, and he laughed, "That's a new one on me, like what, like a bridge is over the water? Or what, up on a cliff overlooking the ocean?"

"We don't know, she passed out before we could get anymore out of her," Methos explained, "I…" it was then that he noticed she was gone.

Kronos also saw what his brother saw, or rather what he didn't see, and he shook his head, "As much as she had to drink, she shouldn't have been able to move."

"Here we go again," Caspian rolled his eyes.

"We'll check upstairs first," Kronos said as he and Methos took to the stairs.

"You know, Kronos," Methos said as they headed up to the second floor, "I was thinking earlier…"

"Congratulations," Kronos dryly remarked.

They reached the top of the stairs and immediately looked for a sign that any of the rooms on that floor were currently occupied; they noticed Methos' door was left slightly ajar and they felt the weak quickening. They pushed the door open and turned on the lights and were mildly surprised by what they saw; everything had been thrown around the room: clothes, books, trinkets, his Walkman and several tapes, a couple of dozen sharp tipped darts that had been pulled out of the board on the wall, and all over his bed were a dozen or so empty candy bar wrappers that had been shredded open.

"You know," Methos said to his brother, "This is starting to remind me of that gremlin movie we saw a few years ago."

"Now she's just screwing with us," Kronos responded.

"Right, but where is she?"

Kronos threw the door shut and saw she wasn't behind it, then they went over to the closet and checked it, but she wasn't there either; they pried open his large trunk by the bed and saw it had been ransacked also, but there wasn't any body in it either, and then they checked under the bed and were surprised to find she was there, curled up with a blanket draped over her body and she appeared to be asleep.

"What were you saying earlier?" he asked Methos.

"I've been trying to figure out _what_ she was doing upstairs that first night, moving everything around and putting it back," Methos said, "I think I've got it. You remember earlier when she was recounting the people she killed?"

"And quite fondly," Kronos answered.

"Some of them were rather…ingenious," Methos settled on the word, "A bit creative, not your everyday run-of-the-mill homicides."

"So what?" Kronos asked.

"We haven't had much of an advantage over her from the start," Methos said, "This is our territory but she knew every inch of it before we ever found out about her. I think she moved everything out and put it back again so she would know every single detail, where everything is, what she could use on one of us if she had to…I was remembering something about this morning, when Caspian was in my room, she came in and hit him once, and I thought she was sleepwalking…she wasn't, she was just acting, but even with her eyes closed she knew where to go to pick up that paperweight off my dresser and bash Caspian's head in again…she's got it all figured out, where everything is, what she can use as a weapon…she's a lot smarter than we gave her credit for."

"If she was so smart, she wouldn't have been caught in the first place," Kronos reminded him.

"Maybe, but you have to admit she's been giving us one hell of a time since we caught her," Methos remarked, "Not at all what you'd expect from someone in her position."

"No," Kronos agreed, "Everyone else would've been dead by now."

"And I'm sure in a while she's going to wish she was too," Methos said as he pulled Fagan out from under the bed, "In the meantime I suggest we get her into the bathroom now and avoid the rush."

* * *

That night Methos lay in bed half going in and out of sleep as he tried to stay awake and read; trying to enjoy the silence for once and not having to worry that something worse was looming in the atmosphere. Over in Caspian's room however, he was planning a homicide as he'd found all of his things searched through and scattered around the room, looking like a tornado had blown through it. Of his own accord, it never bothered him, but when somebody else came in and screwed everything up, _that_ was too much.

With three other brothers sleeping on the same floor, Caspian paid no attention to the quickening he felt or the strength of it, or lack thereof, until he heard a familiar voice from the doorway saying, "Find what you're looking for, princess?"

Turning around slowly, he glared at Fagan who stood in the doorway with her arms folded to her chest and her weight pressed against the frame like she was waiting on something.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Oh nothing," she answered as she stepped in and saw his sword and his jacket lying on the bed, and trying not to draw much attention to herself, carefully inched along towards the bed, "I just thought I'd come and see how you were doing in finding out what's missing."

Caspian laughed humorlessly and replied, "The joke's on you, I know nothing's missing."

He turned to see her and that was when he saw her reaching for his sword, he got up and charged at her but she dropped on the bed, throwing her weight on his sword, and in that same instant he heard a small explosion and he felt his flesh being ripped open through his chest and out his back, and he could smell the age old odor of gunpowder, but it still didn't quite register in his head that he'd been shot with his own service revolver, the only thing he _hadn't_ thought to check and make sure it wasn't missing.

Methos heard the gunfire in his room and he closed his book and said begrudgingly, "Not again," as he swung his feet around and got up and headed for the door.

Caspian was on the floor looking up at the smoking end of his own gun and saw that Fagan had concealed it in the split second she flopped on his bed by grabbing his jacket to cover it. Now she tossed the jacket aside and the gun was in plain view and her finger was about to pull the trigger again.

"Now get up," she told him, in a voice they hadn't heard from her yet, whereas previously she sounded loud and obnoxious, this time her voice was deathly serious.

Caspian slowly got to his feet and then, moving quicker than she could see, ambushed her and knocked the gun out of her hand and hit her in the side of the head and knocked her down, forcing her onto her knees. Now she appeared to have sense enough to be scared; her body was starting to shake and she tried to raise her arms over her head but they trembled the entire time. She kept her head down and otherwise didn't move as Caspian stood by her and seemed to be entertaining the notion of shooting her in the head and saving them any further trouble. However, before he could pull the trigger, Fagan swung her head back and knocked it against his stomach, and with enough force that she knocked him down beside her. Instead of grabbing for the gun, Fagan grabbed the short blade from his belt and rammed it into his stomach like she was gutting a fish.

Then she saw Methos standing at the door and as he moved to stop her, she moved also, moving quickly and staying low to the ground she charged him and also drove the blade into his gut and brought him down with only half of a scream getting out of his throat. She ran past him and out into the hall, still with the knife in hand; and when she heard somebody coming after her, she jumped over the banister and made a rough landing on her feet at the foot of the stairs and resumed running. She cut across the dining room but didn't get any further because in the dark she hadn't been able to see where she was going and she ran face first into the wall and bashed up her knee.

The lights came up and she turned around and saw Methos, Kronos and Caspian closing in on her, and she futilely backed away along the wall, putting herself in a literal corner. Methos told her to put the knife down, but he had to repeat it a few times before she finally made some gesture of acknowledging the words. She finally nodded her head and said, "Alright", but she didn't put the knife down; she threw it across the room and did it with so much force that the blade punctured through the back of Kronos' hand and buried itself in his flesh. Kronos let out a yell that was more from the initial shock than from the actual pain and pulled it out.

Seeing she was now unarmed, Methos went over to her and looked ready to strangle her and he demanded to know what the hell she was doing.

"It seems obvious to me what it is," Kronos told his brother as he got the tip of the knife out of his hand, "It's all one long psychotic game to her." He looked at the hole in his hand that was quickly healing, then looked over to the girl and dryly commented, "You're good."

"I'm the best," she responded smugly, "But at what, I don't know."

"Get her out of here," Kronos told Methos.

Methos nodded in agreement; it was late and they were all tired and in no mood for anymore of her shenanigans. Methos grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back out to the hall and they started up the stairs, Fagan trailing as far behind Methos as she could under the circumstances. Once they reached the second floor, she broke away from his grip and when he turned around, he felt something sharp poking at his stomach. Slowly moving to look down, he saw she had another blade on him, and this one wasn't a simple knife; it was about seven inches long and the handle was five inches, and the blade had a slight curve and was very narrow towards the point, but the base of it was about three inches across. Methos knew a knife of that sort was not very easy to obtain in these parts and there was only one likely place she could've gotten it from.

"So that's why you tore Caspian's room apart earlier today," he said.

"No, no," she shook her head, "I already knew where it was…I just trashed the place to screw with his head…as much crap is in there, a person would have to wonder if something wasn't missing, and he thought he had the answer that nothing _was_ taken because that would be the even bigger head-screw, well he was wrong."

"And why this?" Methos asked.

"Well you see," Fagan said as she took a step back from him but still held the knife on him; the way she seemed to struggle with holding herself together Methos almost thought she was still drunk. But she remained coherent and convincing as she explained, "I don't know that I can trust you yet…I've told you just about everything there is about my life, but I still don't know that I trust you. I want to make sure."

"Make sure how?" Methos asked her.

"I have my ways," she replied, and nudged at him to continue towards his room.

"You don't believe in listening to reason, do you?" Methos asked her as he walked into his room.

"What would I know about reasoning?" she asked him as she closed the door behind her.

"Good point."

"I'm still not convinced of what your intentions are, or why you want so much to find out where it is I came from."

Methos started to explain but she hit him and told him to shut up.

"I don't buy that you or any of those things you call brothers have any altruistic intentions in getting to the bottom of this…oh no," she shook her head slightly, "I think you've got something else in mind…either to take me back there and lock me back up, or maybe to find a few more like me and bring them here to experiment on as well."

Methos had to give her credit, she could use her imagination wisely.

"You're smart," he told her, "But you're wrong."

"Am I?" she asked, "I know your brothers are cops, but I also know that they don't seem like they need a lot of attention drawn to them. If they were really as obsessed about cracking the conspiracy of Grayson, they'd have to realize that would mean just that, a lot of unwanted attention, bad publicity for them…they strike me as the types who prefer to stay back in the shadows."

Methos resisted the urge to laugh, she had no idea.

"You think you have all the answers," Methos told her, "Think you know us all so well."

"I've had plenty of time to watch and wait and find out just what kind of people you are," Fagan reminded him.

"Right, so you know if we wanted you dead, you'd be dead by now," Methos said.

She sneered at him and slowly shook her head, "You underestimate me…you forget I let you four monkeys think you were pulling all the strings here for a week…seeing what you wanted to see, someone who couldn't fight you, couldn't possibly hope to defeat you…but it wasn't real, this is real, I am real here and now…you never had one clue as to what I was or what I was capable of."

Yes indeed, Methos thought back to his previous statement, if ever they'd needed an apprentice in the current day and age, she would've been it.

"Why don't you put the knife down?" he suggested.

The look on her face in response to his question was a familiar one; not on her, but he had seen it on Kronos' face plenty of times. It wasn't one easily readable, not a smile, certainly not, despite the mouth being turned up; no, this look was a mix of self amusement and cynicism.

"Come now, Methos," she said, "You should know me better than that…if you want it, you're going to have to take it, and you don't really want to bring the others charging in here for another wild goose chase, do you?"

"My brothers were right, it is just all a game to you, isn't it?" Methos asked.

"I may be psychotic," she said, nodding her head, "But I'm not crazy."

Story of all their lives.

* * *

Methos never remembered falling asleep but he woke up in his bed and realized it was morning; he also realized that there was another Immortal in the room with him, and that there was someone else in his bed. Getting his eyes open the first thing he saw was Kronos standing over him with a big smirk on his face. "My compliments, Brother," he said.

Methos wanted to ask what the hell Kronos was talking about, but he wasn't awake enough to form any words yet; he turned on his side and saw Fagan laying beside him asleep, her body tangled in the sheets and her clothes apparently somewhere else. The sight was enough that Methos about jumped out of the bed.

"What the hell?" he finally managed to get out. He backed away from her and about fell off the bed, the sheets pulled back and he was relieved to see that he was still dressed.

"It would seem," Kronos told him, "That I knew what I was doing when I had you take her away last night."

Methos' mind was reeling, he wanted to tell Kronos that it wasn't anything like that, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what had happened last night.

"What did happen last night?" he asked.

"Well I wasn't here last night, Methos," Kronos told him, "You were."

Methos backed away from the girl and about fell out of the bed entirely except that Kronos grabbed him and pushed him back towards her. It was then that Methos remembered something and he started tearing the bed sheets apart, pulling them completely off, looking for the knife she'd held on him the night before. He had no doubt that Caspian would be looking for it and he seriously doubted his brother came in during the night and recollected it.

"Now what're you doing?" Kronos asked him.

Methos had ripped off all the covers and the knife wasn't anywhere to be found. Realizing how he looked to his brother, he stopped and replied, "I have no idea."

* * *

The rain had finally come to an end and the sun had come out instead; after a week of clouds and storms, it was a shock that for Methos took time to adapt to. He managed to avoid stepping into the mud puddles and headed around to the backyard where he found Kronos.

"I had another idea earlier," he said, "About the asylum."

"What now?" Kronos asked.

"We can't find out where the place is, and nobody who knows is saying anything either, what does that tell you?" Methos asked.

Kronos looked back at him and replied, "Oh trust me, you don't want to know what I think of it. Although, the only thing that would make sense would be if the place was under a different name, either originally, or now, but that doesn't make sense either because the newspaper specifically said Grayson."

"That's right," Methos said, "But nobody will tell us where it is, what if there's a reason for that?"

"Like what?" Kronos wanted to know.

Methos hated to admit it but this was the part that had him stumped as well. "It's like everybody involved has been given direct orders."

"Gee, that sounds familiar," Kronos commented, and when he saw the murderous glare in Methos' eyes he added, "Sorry."

"Alright, I have an idea," Methos said, "What's a place where the public wouldn't know about its location, and authority figures like our local branch of the police are given the same condescending 'I know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing' treatment as regular citizens?"

It took Kronos a minute to come to the answer, but Methos beat him to it when he answered, "A government area."

Kronos almost laughed. He'd heard plenty from his brother on this particular subject before, he remembered in the heyday of Area 51 all the ridiculous theories Methos had spouted about that.

"You can't be serious," he said.

"Oh come on, Kronos," Methos told him, "It makes sense…if this asylum _is_ in the middle of an area that's cordoned off by the government, it explains perfectly why everybody's keeping their mouths shut."

"Right, except why then would they put an advertisement in the newspaper announcing her escape?" Kronos asked.

"Did you read the entire article?" Methos asked, "It doesn't say if she's found to contact the local police, it has a number that runs directly to Grayson but no address, and no mention of _where_ it's located. If they'd start sending their men out, people might start to notice and they'd start asking questions, and it could be they can't afford to have that happen. Now, I don't like sounding conceited," he smirked, "But it seems the government's specialty is _not_ in bringing people back alive, and it would seem they need her kept alive and brought back for a reason."

"But that leaves the question of just _how_ did she escape?" Kronos asked, "You know how they are, if they want somebody dead, they will be, or if they want them to just come up missing, they'll never be found. So how did she get here?"

"I don't know," Methos said, "It's only an idea, and until she tells us anything more we won't be any closer to finding out than we are now; though it does kind of make sense, if she gets out, she might start talking, and somebody might believe her. They can't have that, so they need her back, but for some reason I get the feeling she's more valuable to whoever's in charge alive than dead. Maybe it has something to do with the experiments performed on her."

"Like what?" Kronos asked.

"That autopsy attempt maybe," Methos said, "It doesn't seem that that's a norm for the patients in Grayson." He didn't seem to believe it himself anymore, "I don't know...I'll admit the whole thing sounds idiotic, but unfortunately as we well know, stranger things have happened."

"No question about that," Kronos agreed.

"But Kronos, you realize what it means if I'm right about this, don't you?" Methos asked.

Kronos just nodded. He didn't dare say anything lest he set his brother off like a bomb again. Fortunately, he didn't have to say what he was thinking, because Methos did it for him.

"If the government's involved in this, then that means they know about Immortals, and we'll be going into another Holocaust."

"There's always the chance that you're wrong," Kronos reminded him.

"I hope I am, but with this in mind, it's more crucial now than ever that we find out where this place is," Methos said, "There has to be some way to find out, and there has to be a way to get that girl to tell us, and we have to find out what it is, and fast. We could be sitting on a real time bomb here and there's no telling when it'll go off"


End file.
